Slashdot Mirror
Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share (w3counter.com)
LichtSpektren writes: W3Counter's stats for June 2016 are in, and Linux desktop accounts for 2.48% of all web visits from tracked websites... (Android is counted separately from "Linux desktop.")
Meanwhile, NetMarketShare shows Linux with a 2.02% share of the desktop market. And StatCounter shows a more detailed breakdown of the top 7 operating systems, with Windows 7 at 42.02%, Windows 10 at 21.88%, OSX at 9.94%, Windows 8.1 at 8.66%, Windows XP at 6.5%, and another 4.06% for "Unknown" (which is roughly tied with "Other") -- beating Windows 8.0 at 3.52%. In May they also reported another thought-provoking statistic: that Firefox's browser usage had surpassed that of IE and Edge combined for the first time.
Meanwhile, NetMarketShare shows Linux with a 2.02% share of the desktop market. And StatCounter shows a more detailed breakdown of the top 7 operating systems, with Windows 7 at 42.02%, Windows 10 at 21.88%, OSX at 9.94%, Windows 8.1 at 8.66%, Windows XP at 6.5%, and another 4.06% for "Unknown" (which is roughly tied with "Other") -- beating Windows 8.0 at 3.52%. In May they also reported another thought-provoking statistic: that Firefox's browser usage had surpassed that of IE and Edge combined for the first time.
I've tried many Linux flavors over the years. Most have their quirks and have always been known for having issues with some hardware. But most are way better now and if your not tied to software that only runs on Windows OS. You may find that it does pretty good. Firefox can run all the html5 streaming stuff, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu. Wasn't long ago if you ran Linux it was a mess to stream video. I wonder how much of that 2% is counted as Chrome OS which could register as a Linux OS? It's backend is Ubuntu so it could very well be a big part of that 2%. Chrome OS is probably the best desktop Linux success and continues to gain in certain markets.
Reasons Linux will never succeed on the desktop:
1) Systemd is being forced on users more aggressively than Windows 10. Nobody likes having changes like these forced on them.
2) The user interfaces like GNOME 3 and KDE are difficult to use and aesthetically awful.
3) Support for gaming is terrible. This is largely due to lousy video drivers. Distributions eschew proprietary drivers that provide good performance in favor of inferior open source drivers. The GPL is placed ahead of the best interests of users.
4) Office software is inferior and incompatible with industry standard software like MS Office. Interoperability is basically zero because any attempt to share documents between MS Office and Libreoffice will result in formatting errors.
5) The security of distributions cannot be trusted, as proved by the recent hack of Linux Mint and the compromised ISOs being served out to users.
6) Support is basically non-existant. Users are directed to mailing lists, where they are likely to be berated for their questions. There are no good places to get support without rude users insulting newbies.
7) There is no long-term support for software because projects are frequently abandoned or forked. This results in a massive amount of software that may perform critical tasks but is no longer updated.
8) Packages are confusing for users because functionality is duplicated across many packages. This is frequently because projects were forked due to the immaturity of developers and their inability to coexist, which is typical of the entire Linux community.
9) Windows has tools that automatically repair a damaged system. When Linux fails, the user is left with a system that hangs at boot time or, worse yet, being left to a Grub 2 prompt.
10) Linux is terribly fragmented, leaving the users with many different distributions, none of which work particularly well. Users are left picking between distributions that each support a subset of available software and none of which are likely to fully meet the needs of a particular user.
11) As a bonus, telemetry in Linux is every bit as invasive as on Windows 10. Software packages such as Bug Buddy are required by all distributions and automatically communicate telemetry data to developers. Because the packages are mandatory for users, they have no way to opt out of the telemetey, which can reveal private data to third parties.