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.

Comments

Linux dropped to 0.8% for Steam

[Anonymous Coward]

News from the same day: Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-latest-steam-hardware-survey-shows-a-rather-insignificant-drop-for-linux.7557

Re:Linux dropped to 0.8% for Steam

[Mike Frett]

Because a lot of Linux think Steam is an evil DRM overlord trying to lock Linux users in. So they choose to use GOG and other places.

Go Donald!

[ColdWetDog]

So now I'm all confused. Is this due to Trump's influence, Brexit or Global Warming?

Re:Go Donald!

[FatdogHaiku]

So now I'm all confused. Is this due to Trump's influence, Brexit or Global Warming?

Trump Warming to Brexit!

Re:Go Donald!

[thegarbz]

Systemd.

Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Will make this the year of Linux on the Desktop.

Re: Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the MS Shill is back.

What a fucking tard.

Re: Windows 10

[mark-t]

You may be trolling, but I'd like to answer a few of these:

1) I have to call bullshit on this. While some distros do indeed push systemd on you, that is a distribution-specific issue, and not a Linux one. There are at least two very mainstream systemd-free distributions of Linux. and both will remain so for the far forseeable future.

4) No argument about compatibility, my wife has griped about the same thing, but one could just as easily argue that the windows versions are inferior because they aren't compatible with open source alternatives. The notion of which is actually better depends on what a person happens to personally prefer, and is not based on objective and universal truth. Simply being adopted by fewer people does not make inferior by the same reasoning that suggesting the earth was not the center of the universe is not flawed either.

9) Three words: 'fsck -a /dev/sda1'. Some distros even come with an option at boot time to launch a recovery shell, but in a pinch you can always just boot from a usb recovery image or dvd. In my experience, recovery time on Linux in the event of a catastrophic failure is much faster (not to mention much less frequently needed in the first place) than it is on Windows.

And finally:

11) You are quite mistaken. First of all, not even all distributions require you to use X, let alone gnome, of which Bug Buddy is just a part. Secondly, only a very small amount of technical skill is required to block it.

The chief reason why Linux will probably not succeed on the desktop has nothing to do with any technical characteristics, merits, or lack thereof of the OS itself, but rather on the typical technical aptitude of computer users. Linux doesn't hold your hand the way that some other OS's might, and this can be intimidating for some people, but with the freedom that Linux gives to its users comes a great ability to control and customize your computer to behave exactly the way that you want.... in ways that Windows users probably cannot even imagine.

Re: Windows 10

[jovius]

It's likely there will sooner be more actual desktops running Linux than there are Linux desktops on computers, as per the IoT trends these days...

Re:Windows 10

[hey!]

Don't feel bad. I used Debian 0.9 when that was a thing. I dowloaded it over a 2400 baud modem onto a stack of floppies, haha!

No, seriously, I actually did that. I also got X to work on a Hercules Graphics Card, and if you even know what that is, you're old.

Re: Windows 10

[Blaskowicz]

I know you're replying to a troll but frankly, regarding 9) :

9) Boot with an absolutely non-critical hard drive removed, then the boot process hangs. If you're unlucky, the graphical boot splash feature may even hide the line "Press S) to continue, M) for maintenance". I'm lucky to know to press S.
Maybe your system doesn't do that, but mine did with a major user-oriented distro. I tried adding "nofail" in the fstab options but it did the hang thing anyway.

A naive poweruser may also declare drives in the fstab without using UUIDs, leading to bullshitery as drives jump randomly between sda, sdb, sdc. That's another issue entirely.

I may call that 'paper cuts' to be nice. There are still room for improvement, as you may get bitten by something and most users might get stuck when facing such cases.

Re: Windows 10

[Opportunist]

1) The whole Systemd thing is something that only, and I mean ONLY, affects hard core Linux geeks. The average Linux user, let alone someone coming anew to the system, won't even notice that "force" at all.

2) I agree, but so is the Windows 10 surface. Bluntly, given the choice between Win10 and Gnome... Before I answer, is shooting myself in the head an option?

3) Not really, the support for graphics cards is actually quite good. What stymies gaming is the lack of support for gaming hardware. Flight sticks? Steering wheels? Hell, even support for fancy mice sucks (ever tried using a high rez mouse? I dare you, it might work. Sometimes). You are right that some distros do a tapdance around proprietary drivers that borders on religious extremism, but there are quite a few that don't give a shit about petty crap like that. The problem is rather the support from gaming hardware manufacturers.

4) Nope. LibreOffice is actually easier to use and more approachable, mostly because they don't feel that urge to reinvent the user interface with every single incarnation. No need to relearn everything time and again.

5) The security is still superior to the situation on Windows. While MS itself is getting pretty good at finding and rooting out security concerns, there is lots of software that you "have to" use that is omnipresent on every system that is a security nightmare (Adobe, I'm looking your way!). This doesn't apply to Linux due to the way these programs are treated in the OS. I have to give you, though, that there are alternatives that lock down the OS so far that it's virtually impossible to get anything bad in. But also anything the OS maker doesn't want you to.

6) That's different to MS, Apple, Android... in what way exactly? Unless you're paying for premium support, you're usually left to fend for yourself, too. And that premium support is available for various Linux distributions, too.

7) Quite the opposite. You can, today, have full support for any kind of ancient hardware that you could think of. Yes, you can actually install a current distribution on hardware from 10+ years ago and it will run. I wouldn't recommend trying that with a current Windows version. Likewise, you can run pretty much all ancient software on a current distribution. Again, I have a lot of Windows software here that keeps me from shifting versions due to incompatibility.

8) Wow, getting ad hominem already? Isn't that usually left to later in the discussion? Anyway. Again, no. There are indeed different packages dealing with the same problem, though. It's called competition. I know, an alien concept to someone who has been indoctrinated by MS, but look it up if you find the time. It's considered a good thing. At least if you're into capitalism.

9) Yes, Windows has a lot of tools that are actually pretty good at FUBARing a slightly misconfigured system without even bothering to ask you. Especially if you dare to install something next to Windows. That God complex ("Thou shalt not have any OS besides me!") really pisses me off.

10) Windows was pretty good at fragmenting, too. How many Windows XP versions did exist? 20? More? And that were all from the same company, and $deity help you if you picked the wrong one, because you made your choice, for good or ill. Worse than a marriage, actually. With Linux, you can at least try out a few before you settle down without spending a dime. And if you don't know which one to get, there is PLENTY of webpages dedicated to nothing but helping you finding the right one for your particular needs.

11) That is just a blatant outright lie. No idea why you thought you could possibly get away with it on /., or maybe you thought nobody would read that far, but no later than here it's obvious you're trolling. Actually, if I only had read your whole drivel to the end before starting to reply... but I'm so not going to delete this now.

Re: Windows 10

[JohnFen]

I don't know what you'll take as "proof", nor why you demand it so, considering that the original comment provided none for its assertions either, but here's my take:

#1: Nonsequitor. Yes, SystemD is being forced on people in a way that many consider unacceptable. No, this won't affect Linux adoption to any measurable degree.

#2: That's an opinion that is not universal. Also, it ignores that there are many UIs that are not Gnome or KDE and are hard to distinguish from Windows. There is great variety here, people can select the UI that they get along best with.

#3: This is true, gaming support is terrible (although I think the reason he gives is very misleading). This is improving, but remains an issue. OTOH, I know many Linux gamers who run Windows in a VM for the games they can't run natively, and are happy with that.

#4: This is false. I've been using OpenOffice and Libre for many years in an office environment, exchanging files with MS Office users frequently, and this hasn't been as issue at all for years. It is true, however, that the open source versions of these sorts of applications do not work identically to the Office products and require relearning some habits. But that are equally functional and usable.

#5: While it is true that no security is perfect and there will always be breaches -- even in the Linux world -- I'm not sure how this truth decreases the chances of Linux adoption, given that it is at least equally true for all alternatives, including Windows.

#6: False. It is easier to get answers to questions about Linuxy things than for any other OS I use. Even if you're too timid to ask questions on expert and hobbyist sites, you can still pay cash money to get professional support.

#7: False. While that sort of thing does happen, it doesn't happen as frequently as he implies -- and when it does, it is generally not a large disruption. Personally, I've had just as much problem with this sort of thing in the Windows world as in the Linux world, so I don' t know how this is a differentiator.

#8: I honestly don't know what he's talking about here. This sort of thing happened a lot in the old days, but I can't remember it happening with any of my machines for a few years now.

#9: False.

#10: False, and an odd criticism. Most Linux users I know who have multiple machines run a single distro on all of them. The main distros support nearly everything, there is no need to have certain distros for certain kinds of machines.

#11: False. In the main distros, all telemetry in the OS and core utilities is optional, unlike Windows 10. It is also well documented and easy to disable. Naturally, if you're talking about applications written by random developers, it's up to the developer how this is handled -- but at least in Linux it's easy to simply firewall off any and all applications you don't trust.

Re: Windows 10

[TommyNelson]

The chief reason why Linux will probably not succeed on the desktop has nothing to do with any technical characteristics, merits, or lack thereof of the OS itself, but rather on the typical technical aptitude of computer users. Linux doesn't hold your hand the way that some other OS's might, and this can be intimidating for some people, but with the freedom that Linux gives to its users comes a great ability to control and customize your computer to behave exactly the way that you want.... in ways that Windows users probably cannot even imagine.

Not so much to do with hand-holding than with marketing budgets and vendor binding. Installing and running Windows might be simpler than Linux, but not that much. Many distros have come a long way. The problem Linux faces is all the preinstalled machines. Buy an off-the-shelf desktop or laptop PC and it'll close to 100% likely be preinstalled with Windows.

Re:Windows 10

[bondsbw]

Like what? I'm surprised because some of our enterprise software built for Windows 7 works on 10, even though it crashes on 8.

Re:Windows 10

[armanox]

Never played with Hercules, but I have done CGA...

Re: Windows 10

[MrKrillls]

re #9: The first time I used Linux: when my last (and final) Windows machine began to do mindfuckingly stupid things, it was Linux that helped me sort out the mess that windows had become. I ran Linux off a live Linux disc that I had hanging around and had never used, and sorted out the mess that I could not from within Windows. The Linux distribution was in German. I don't know German. But it was so easy to use I figured out how to sort out the mess, in a language I don't know, with an operating system I had never used before.

Nuff said.

Re: Windows 10

[MrKrillls]

Hah, you write, "You are a perfect example of why Linux has not rising above a 2% share."

Funny, not that many years ago you would have written, "You are a perfect example of why Linux has not rising above a 1% share."

More recently it would have been, "You are a perfect example of why Linux has not rising above a 1.5 % share."

Now you get to say, "You are a perfect example of why Linux has not rising above a 2% share."

Soon you will say, ""You are a perfect example of why Linux has not rising above a 2.5% share."

And so on...

Re:Windows 10

[hairyfeet]

Hardware wise Windows 10 is fucking terrible, if you want examples? Plenty of nice quad core Nforce boards out there, works just fine on 7, will never run on Windows 10. The same goes for a huge chunk of Realtek and Via ethernet chips, some of which will work fine on even 8.1 but 10? Not a chance in hell.

As far as Linux goes? They can mod be down all the want but its user friendliness is a cheap coat of paint that falls off the first time it has the slightest glitch. If you don't install anything other than LO and FF and never update/upgrade it or patch it? Sure it'll be fine until it gets pwned, hell you can say the same of Windows 98 for that matter but the second things start going wrong? All that supposed progress falls off like an Econo paintjob and its right back to "open up bash and type" a bunch of bullshit that never works.

Like it or not Linux fans Windows has gotten handholding when things go wrong down to a science, its all friendly UI wizards and "push button to fix" easy. Ever since Windows 8 its had "refresh" (basically a 1 click repair reinstall) and its had system restore and driver rollback since Windows 2K, frankly 2 technologies that Linux SHOULD have had for the better part of a decade but doesn't. and don't give me that "Oh well if you just set up home on a separate partition" bullshit because no distro does it that way by default so that entire argument is moot, hell you can do the exact same thing with Windows since XP but likewise no OEM does that so it means jack and squat.

As a Linux admin friend told me, right before giving up on Linux on the desktop for a Macbook (which he loves BTW) because of the BS "Linux doesn't get better, it just gets different" and he's right, its 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Get network manager finally working well with WiFi? All the distros stick a pre alpha build of KDE 4 as the default and crap all over the OS again. KDE 4 becomes stable and nice? Here comes SystemD to crap all over everything again. And did anybody notice the devs seem to really crap on the OS whenever MSFT puts out a bad OS, you sure Elop isn't running things there? MSFT puts out bloated piggie Vista? Don't worry MSFT, Linux can top that with Puke Audio that sends Linux audio back to win98 levels for a couple of years. Windows 8 a big cellphone pile o' suck? Don't be scared MSFT because we are throwing out our DEs for alpha quality code that will take years to get us back to where we was before we started!...sigh.

Re: Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Reasons Windows should never have succeeded on the desktop:

1) Windows is being forced on users more and more aggressively. Nobody likes having changes like these forced on them.
2) The user interface is difficult to use and aesthetically awful.
3) Support for gaming is terrible. This is largely due to pushing Xbox ahead of PC's
4) Office software is incompatible between versions. And is now nickel and diming with subscriptions
5) The security of distributions cannot be trusted, as proved by the history of vulnerabilities since 1995 and earlier.
6) Support is basically non-existant. Users are directed to wizards that lead to "sorry, no clue" results.
7) There is no useful long-term support for software because versions are serially abandoned. 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 in different ways. This is frequently because of the immaturity of developers and their inability to coexist, which is typical of the entire Windows community.
9) Windows has tools that automatically damage a system.
10) Windows is terribly fragmented, No one knows how to set up, manage or troubleshoot anything because the system changes in arcane ways with every release or even patch. Users are left hoping that all will be well, even though experience tells them they are fresh out of luck.
11) As a bonus, telemetry in Windows is pervasive. Yet, despite its promise of a better service all it seems to result in is more spamming, data charges and the feeling that Microsoft probably knows your shoe size and your account balances.

FTFY

Re: Windows 10

[TimMD909]

Why isn't this modded "Informative"?

Re: Windows 10

[cyber-vandal]

If the user can't install Linux on it then they won't use it irrespective of whose fault it is. My Wi-Fi dongle doesn't work out of the box on the latest Ubuntu without having to follow a set of arcane (to the average user) instructions. This may be the fault of TP Link but it means I don't get to use 5 Ghz Wi-Fi on it which is kind of a problem in an apartment block. A compatibility layer for Windows drivers would be nice but there's no such thing as far as I know.

Re: Windows 10

[drinkypoo]

the support for graphics cards is actually quite good. What stymies gaming is the lack of support for gaming hardware. Flight sticks? Steering wheels?

Flightsticks are no problem. Outliers like my stickworks f22 pro aren't expected to work... it doesn't work on new versions of windows either. Steering wheels are a problem, although most of the logi wheels are supposed to work now and in practice they own basically the whole market anyway.

Re:Windows 10

[Lisias]

Don't feel bad. I used SLS when Debian even didn't existed yet. Hell, I heard that Slackware born as a fork from SLS! (Kernel 0.99 or 0.98 I think, all was statically linked yet, IIRC)

I had to import it on CD-ROM, spent some serious money on it (more than a Windows 3.11 license fee).

Happily, however, I had an EGA card around so I could us X in full blown 16 colors. :-D

Re:Windows 10

[FlyHelicopters]

No, seriously, I actually did that. I also got X to work on a Hercules Graphics Card, and if you even know what that is, you're old.

My first computer was an Apple IIe with an 80 column text card, does that count? :)

It did have the 64K ram upgrade to 128K, that was expensive, but it was needed for some programs... and... I was lucky, I had the Disk II Duo, so I had TWO 5.25" floppy drives!!!

Yes, I'm old, but not THAT old, I was a kid back then. :)

Re: Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how windows fans ignore the billion dollar industry dedicated exclusively to supporting windows. All that hand holding usually leads to nowhere, serously the "finding a solution for your problem" wizard seems more like a placebo than anything else. The amount of Windows installations that require direct technical support is not trivial, I know a few people who have made a nice living out fixing horned windows installs through the years...

Windows is the default, but at this stage it really not that much user friendly than any of its competitors. And given its commanding lead, that's kind of pathetic really. And no, your gramma ain't gonna be able to reinstall windows or install drivers on her own.

Re: Windows 10

[serviscope_minor]

Installing and running Windows might be simpler than Linux

For the first time in ages, I had to install Windows (in a VM). My first thought was "huh wow this is nearly as easy as installing ubuntu". MS have come a long way in improving the ease of install, but it's still not quite as easy,.

Re:Windows 10

[Bert64]

The reason people say "open up bash and type" is because a textual interface is easier to explain vocally or in a textual medium like a website. Text is far more clear, you read out the instructions and they read back the output, they don't need to understand the output or interpret it, just read it. Compare that to a gui where you have to explain and describe and rely on both sides of the conversation understanding the way things have been described.

You could usually achieve the same result through a gui, only doing so would take twice as long to explain.

I've also seen many many cases of windows problems where "just open regedit and..." or something similar was the proposed solution, even very recently people have been proposing such hacks as the way to get rid of the windows 10 nagware - how is this better than the idea of opening a bash shell?

While i agree that linux in its current form is unsuitable for the average user, windows is even less suitable. Both systems can be limped along by users who have no idea what they're doing, but both are dangerous and can easily be broken by such users. General purpose computers are specialist tools designed by geeks for geeks, putting such systems in the hands of users who don't understand how to use them properly results in an epidemic of malware, fraud and other crime.

Users are better off with games consoles, chromebooks and ipads etc.

Re: Windows 10

[thegarbz]

And how is that related to auto-fixing tools? Running a live CD and using skill is exactly the opposite. I'm in agreement with the GP for all points except 9. On Linux the completely skill-less are outta luck if something goes pearshaped. There's no auto-rollback functionality. There's no magic recovery that will rebuild /boot.

Problems are less likely to happen due to what appears to be far less system-hosing bugs, but it doesn't change the fact that auto recovery in Windows is miles ahead of Linux. In much the same way a crippled tortoise is miles ahead of a dead and decomposing rabbit in a race.

Re: Windows 10

[thegarbz]

I agree with all of the above except for 8 and 9.

#8: The OSS world still suffers incredibly from stupid bizarre package naming. New users are somewhat insulated from this by distribution maintainers sorting the most popular software into "featured packages". But as soon as you step outside of that comfort zone it's confusing as heck. e.g. on Mint open up Software Utilities and type "office" into the search. Now admittedly if you click features applications "Libreoffice" is listed as a single meta package, but the search results themselves produce some 200+ packages with about 100 of them directly related to libreoffice, and the rest ... well your guess is as good as mine, but I don't see any way to actually install an office suite based on my search for "office". For new users this is still confusing as shit. By the way who calls a DVD video publishing tool "devede".

#9: Please expand. Windows has automated recovery tools that sometimes work. System rollback, auto-repair of bootsector problems, etc. I'm genuinely interested, what is available on Linux in this regard? Last time I had a problem on a Linux system (which is admittedly no where near as often as it is on a Windows system) it took me ages to fix manually. About the only thing that came close to what I can see is apt-get --fix-broken and that has a) never worked, and b) only solves package related issues.

Re:Windows 10

[macs4all]

As a Linux admin friend told me, right before giving up on Linux on the desktop for a Macbook (which he loves BTW)

Wow! You're giving props to OS X?!? My how you've grown!

Sorry, couldn't resist... ;-)

Re: Windows 10

[thegarbz]

Sorry but a big no to number 9.

File system errors are a tiny tiny portion of what can go wrong with Linux, and you've just proven the point even with that. Recovery shell? fsck -a /dev/wtfisthisshit? No, that is well and truly an advanced and manual process, something which Linux is good at, but it's not "It looks like Windows didn't load correctly, do you want to: Startup repair, System Restore, System Image recovery, System Refresh or Restart my PC"

Linux is worlds behind in this regard.

Everything else the GP wrote was bullshit and you're right to call him out on it.

Re: Windows 10

[macs4all]

The chief reason why Linux will probably not succeed on the desktop has nothing to do with any technical characteristics, merits, or lack thereof of the OS itself, but rather on the typical technical aptitude of computer users.

Actually, you inadvertently pointed out the real reason why Linux will never make if on the Desktop: Because Linux "Experts" hold nothing but contempt and derision for "clueless users". IOW those not card-carrying members of The Computer Preisthood.

Until that mindset changes, enjoy your little Toy Operating System. Nice hobby; and some really nice F/OSS Projects come out of the Linux Community; but until Linux has a more "nurturing" reputation, most people won't give it a second glance.

Re: Windows 10

[jhol13]

#4 LibreOffice is not a replacement of Office, even if it works for you. It does not work for me. A bit offtopic, there are lot of web-apps which work only with IE.

#7 This is annoying. There still is no stable video with lip-sync (main reason: pulseaudio). There is still no good replacement for xv (gimp & ristretto are both slow and cumbersome and limited). I do not know if it worse in windows or not, I know it is annoying in Linux world.

#10 atomic.h is in very few distros (Ubuntu LTS misses it). Two different distros are going to have different version of Python meaning difficulties if you need to support both. Same for huge amount of other SW, the biggest reason being nobody gives a shit about backward compatibility.

Re: Windows 10

[Blaskowicz]

Now I remember that USB crash with a particular flash drive. Or the semi-failed (at times) ethernet, which is in my case unimportant given the available PCI slots to plug in a 15-year-old NIC if needed.
I get your grief but this motherboard nearly 10-year-old is unkillable. It was when full ATX low end without graphics was still common.
Even if all on-board hardware save for PS/2 ports were to fail I could still find a way to use it anyway. The PC was inspired by S-100 and Apple II.

Re: Windows 10

[Blaskowicz]

If you're crazy enough or don't mind the waste you could set up a Windows VM with USB 2.0 support, give it the dongle and install router or proxy software on it. Or an ethernet bridge.
Well, a smartphone can be used as a ghetto wifi card in the same way, if it "tethers" over USB.

Specifically I know about some of these USB dongles, the cheap TP Link ones that do one channel of 802.11n. (not ac)
The linux support they give is an archive and "build this and use this on Ubuntu 14.04 with linux 3.16 kernel"

Re: Windows 10

[Blaskowicz]

Hell, there's even the Intel automatic driver upgrading wizard, or many 3rd party auto-upgrading driver wizards. The task was to install Intel's IDE/SATA controller driver on an older, slow as shit laptop.
The auto-upgrader wizards are good for grinding the hard drive and showing a blue bar, but they didn't do anything. Manual installation of driver downloaded from web site (made slightly hard by wizardy web pages) worked and made drive reads 10MB/s faster.

Re:Windows 10

[Blaskowicz]

But with game consoles, chromebooks and ipads you run some risks too, like ipad can't read or write a picture to/from a USB drive, Chromebook can't print etc. (whereas linux may be unable to scan but at least able to print and the scanner/printer combo still does copies)

Re: Windows 10

[mark-t]

Your phrasing indicates that your attitudes towards Linux experts in general are no less snobbish than the very attitudes that you accuse them of having.

The saying about pointing out the speck in someone else's eye when you have a 2x4 in your own comes to mind.

Re: Windows 10

[graphius]

Reasons Windows will never succeed on the desktop:

1) Windows10 is being forced on users more aggressively than Linux. Nobody likes having changes like these forced on them.

2) The user interfaces like metro difficult to use and aesthetically awful.

3) Support for gaming is the only thing legacy windows is good for. This is largely due to lousy video drivers. Microsoft eschew open drivers that provide good performance in favor of inferior proprietary drivers. The manufacturers brand is placed ahead of the best interests of users.

4) Office software is inferior and incompatible with industry standard software like Open Office, Libre Office, etc. Interoperability is basically zero because any attempt to share documents between MS Office and Libreoffice will result in formatting errors.

5) The security of Windows cannot be trusted, as proved by the recent privacy issues.

6) Support is basically non-existant. Users are directed to mailing lists, where they are likely to be berated for their questions or sent to overpriced computer repair stores. 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 changed. 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. (e.g. home, business, pro versions) This is frequently because projects were marketed due to the greed of developers and their inability to coexist, which is typical of the entire Microsoft community.

9) Windows has tools that can only try to automatically repair a damaged system. When Windows fails, the user is left with a system that hangs at boot time or, worse yet, being left without a prompt.

10) Linux is specialized, leaving the users with many different distributions, one of which will work particularly well for your specific use case. Users of Windows are left without the ability of picking between distributions that support a subset of available software which are likely to fully meet the needs of a particular user.

11) As a bonus, telemetry in Linux is nowhere near as invasive as on Windows 10. Software packages such as Bug Buddy are not required by all distributions and will not automatically communicate telemetry data to developers. With Windows, 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.

Re: Windows 10

[cyber-vandal]

Our you could just use Windows in the first place. The TP Link adapter I'm using supports ac fine on Windows but isn't even detected on Linux. That's not the fault of Linux but it's a reason for many not to use it.

Re: Windows 10

[dbreeze]

I have no idea(thankfully) what the Microsoft experience is like these days but it'd have to be awfully pain-free to beat my experience with *buntu boxes for the last several years.

Re: Windows 10

[peawormsworth]

...the fact that auto recovery in Windows is miles ahead of Linux.

I find Linux to be exactly the opposite. It is easy and legal to boot a full system from USB or CD to correct the problems of a Linux system. Last time I tried Windows it wasn't even legal to do that under their weird software license. But I don't use Windows, so I can't really confirm this.

Re: Windows 10

[thegarbz]

Microsoft provides exactly that system called Windows PE. It can be standalone, live CD, or ... it's actually included as part of a standard Windows install and is precisely what fires up through the recovery system when you hosed your system and it's unable to boot.

Anyway remember we're talking autorecovery. Linux is miles behind on the auto bit any which way you cut it. Boot a hosed system and you're automatically presented with 4 options.
The first on a single click will rebuild the entire boot environment and verify correct setup of all core windows files. This fixes most boot issues due to corruption or fat fingers removing critical files and usually results in a bootable system.
The second is maybe 3-4 clicks which gives you the option of selecting a system restore point. This fixes the above + problems with dodgy drivers or software that screwed the registry.
The third option is a complete system refresh, it nukes all your files but none the less with a few mouse clicks you'll have a fresh computer.
The fourth are diagnostic tools which I've never found useful.
and the fifth drops you to a command prompt to fix some stupid admin related things that can prevent you from reaching your desktop. All of this is before we even talk about safe mode, safe mode with networking etc.

At BEST Linux can do the last one, drop you into a minimal shell and gain you access to your system, manually, on the command line. And someone in the know should pretty much always be able to get their system going from this point.

But compared to the automatic options windows provides Linux is in the absolute stone age.

Re: Windows 10

[MrKrillls]

Take it however you want. I had and have no skills to speak of. My point is that linux is so easy that one does not need skills to do basic stuff. I was stumped with Windows. Linux made it easy.

Guess I disagree within limits about the ease of fixing stuff. The limit is that I stay well backed up. and if something goes pearshaped, I'll reinstall, and once again, linux makes that braindead easy.

Another thing. I use one of the 'buntus. Installation and basic upkeep are just simple. I look back on the Windows days with horror.

Re: Windows 10

[Dagger2]

They're papercuts... it's just that there's so many of them, and they never seems to be getting any better, just different.

I install Debian Squeeze and X acceleration doesn't work. I upgrade to Wheezy, and my sound card has no volume control. Upgrading to Jessie fixes those, but now printing segfaults the drivers and network-manager automatically breaks all bridge interfaces I create. I understand that computers are hard, but just once I'd like to install a Linux desktop without having to wonder which major subsystem is going to be broken this time.

Re: Windows 10

[buchanmilne]

"A compatibility layer for Windows drivers would be nice but there's no such thing as far as I know."

What is ndiswrapper?

Re: Windows 10

[buchanmilne]

"Don't worry MSFT, Linux can top that with Puke Audio that sends Linux audio back to win98 levels for a couple of years. "

For a few months skype needed some environment variable for sound (but distros that shipped skype shipped them with this workaround) and old games relying on OSS need to be started with pasuspender. Big deal. Pulse allows a lot of nice automatic behaviour so things "just work".

Sure, Windows has more apps, but that is the only advantage it has. It's advantage over Android and iOS *was* multitasking, but defaulting to full-screen-only apps and mobile-like apps since Windows 8 has resulted in Windows no longer being the leading desktop OS it was up until Windows 7.

Even Microsoft has realised they can't tie their success only to Windows, which is why they are bringing their software to Linux (starting with Office on Android, .Net on Linux, MS SQL server on Linux etc.).

Re: Windows 10

[volmtech]

The people who code these distros are very smart, why can't they include some hand holding? As an old hand at computing (I was programing on my Sinclair ZX81 in 1981) I can puzzle out what I need but a text file of how to get common things going would be helpful. I just put Kubuntu on an old HP Pavilion 1000 laptop. It took days for me to get the wireless connection functioning. I finally clicked around and saw my router name listed and activated that. The average computer user does not have the patience to do that.

Then there is the process of making a live cd/dvd. I can understand needing that for a new build but if an old system can connect to the internet why can't the downloaded files simply install themselves?

Re: Windows 10

[mark-t]

Because you can't hold someone's hand to guide them if you still want them to have just as much control. The fact that some computer users may be willing to surrender that amount of control is irrelevant.

Re: Windows 10

[toddestan]

The original nForce and nForce 2 was the best you could get on Socket A, which was otherwise plagued with shit chipsets from VIA, SIS, and including AMD's own. Then I later made the mistake of buying some nForce based boards for the AMD64 processors. Utter garbage.

I really want to like AMD, but eventually I switched over to Intel because at least their chipsets work.

Linux Users use Adblockers

[yithar7153]

I would assume Linux has the largest group of users with adblockers, thus Linux would have the smallest desktop share.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[Solandri]

These types of stats are gathered using the user agent string in a http request, not from ads. StatCounter has an agreement with millions of websites to gather their site usages statistics (e.g. page hit counter) in this manner.

Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[93 Escort Wagon]

That's true, but similar story: a higher percentage of Linux users are probably using tools like umatrix which spoof the user agent string to fight "browser fingerprint" style tracking.

I used to think that was true and possibly actually significant; but, over the past two years, as I've seen more "desktop Linux" use among our grad students, I've also started seeing a lot of pretty clueless Linux users.

I realize that (and this next statement) are purely anecdotal; but most of the people I know who are knowledgable Linux users don't use Linux as their desktop OS.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[QuietLagoon]

...I would assume Linux has the largest group of users with adblockers...

And I would figure you'd be wrong, as you provide no substantiation whatsoever.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[alvinrod]

Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.

I doubt that Android users who actually did such would amount to any significant amount. Most users probably don't know such a thing is possible let alone be able to do something like that. Unless there's a browser that has a nice shiny button that does it for them, they wouldn't be doing that. There are a lot of tech savvy Android users, but Android is also the platform of the masses and they're generally tech illiterate to the point that if you asked them what mobile OS they were running they're just as likely to answer Motorola or Galaxy as not.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[Opportunist]

Depends. Is there an app that does it for them?

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[JohnFen]

These types of stats are gathered using the user agent string in a http request, not from ads.

I spoof my User Agent string to make my machines look like Windows running Firefox, to get around those idiotic websites that insist on altering behavior according to your browser or OS, so I'm pretty sure that my machines were not correctly counted.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[JohnFen]

(On my desktop as well as mobile devices)

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[Nemyst]

That's just like everything else: as a thing (doesn't have to be an OS or even software) becomes more mainstream, the proportion of power users and experts will shrink. Explosive growth for Linux wouldn't imply a whole bunch of new geeks suddenly appeared, it'd just mean more "regular people" started using it.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[bloodhawk]

Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.

By a Lot you mean a tiny percentage of technical users that care.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[bloodhawk]

most users would not even know if such an app exists, the only way for it to be true is if it was one of the hugely popular apps which just happened to automatically make this change for them in the background.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[whoever57]

I spoof my User Agent string to make my machines look like Windows running Firefox,

Thereby encouraging websites to continue to think that Linux doesn't matter.

Have you tried not spoofing your user agent? I don't and I don't see any issues other than the need for plugins that are not available under Linux.

Re:Linux Users use Adblockers

[umafuckit]

The people I know who are knowledgeable about Linux actually use it. The ones who aren't knowledgeable tend not to know about it.

I don't know what the numbers are, but I know a few people who indeed are knowledgeable on Linux but use Windows or OS X on their desktop. The core reason is that they don't feel strongly about the OS they use so will just run whatever is most convenient. They might use Linux on severs or clusters for high-power work but don't use it on their laptop. They might want to avoid the temptation of having an OS they fiddle with and waste time on when they can get their work done on Windows/Mac. They may develop software that is Windows-based and so run Windows on their laptop/desktop. These are all reasons that I've seen for people with good Linux skills not running it on their desktop.

In fact, I almost fall into this camp. I've been using Macs as my laptop of choice for 8 years now, but Linux on work desktops.

Yay Linux!

[innocent_white_lamb]

I've been using Linux exclusively for closing in on 20 years now -- when I decided that DOS wasn't going to cut it in the brave new world of the Internet I tried Windows 98 for about two months. Decided that wasn't my thing and switched to Red Hat Linux and never left. (Though I use Centos rather than Red Hat's branded offering.)

I see a plus and a minus here. The plus: Linux may become better supported, easier to find in stores like Staples, and so on.

But it will also become a bigger target for the bad guys. There's a certain amount of security to be had using a more obscure operating system.

Re:Yay Linux!

[Wyzard]

There's a certain amount of security to be had using a more obscure operating system.

Linux is hardly "obscure". It's not widely used on desktops, but it's the dominant operating system for Internet servers. That makes it a plenty big target for attackers already.

Re:Yay Linux!

[innocent_white_lamb]

It's "obscure" on the desktop. Therefore you have less things like booby-trapped websites and spam to deal with.

Internet servers aren't generally used to visit other websites and read email.

Re: Yay Linux!

[spectrum-]

A target for desktop applications I think is the point here. A desktop end user uses browsers and plugins like Java or flash. A server OS is going to be running serious services like DNS or dhcp or ssh or a web server. Very different exploit targets.

The main issue is so much more work was required in the past to port malware to a different operating system. Nowadays with Java and flash and JavaScript it's a bit easier for nasty stuff to get in. And users can l have a false sense of invincibility clicking things with blind abandon without the sanity checks and anti malware you'd require as a default in Windows systems.

Re:Yay Linux!

[John Allsup]

While there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, you would expect those in charge of internet servers to be better aware of risks to avoid than the average home user.

Re:Yay Linux!

[Nemyst]

Which doesn't imply that typical desktop vulnerabilities have been addressed at all. That web servers and databases are hardened won't change anything for your mom's facebook browsing. Browsers (and their plugins), office suites, email clients and so on are a whole new attack vector that's not had that much of a look at just yet on Linux.

Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes this even less impressive is that Linux was at 2% back in 2004, as reported by /. way back then. Although I do suppose that is better than 2009, when /. reported that Linux reached 1% "for the first time".

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[AthanasiusKircher]

What makes this even less impressive is that Linux was at 2% back in 2004, as reported by /. way back then. Although I do suppose that is better than 2009, when /. reported that Linux reached 1% "for the first time".

To be fair, the first story from 2004 you posted doesn't claim 2% active market share -- in fact the summary states they are waiting for those numbers -- but rather that 2% of NEW PCs were using Linux when they reached the user's desk. That's a rather different stat, and even if true, one would expect that stat to be greater than actual active market share if the market share is growing. That stat also wouldn't take into account how many people LATER installed a different OS on a machine that originally was purchased with Linux (or, conversely, how many people installed Linux on a machine purchased with a different OS).

And the second story you linked to is actually trying to measure active market share (like the present story), which was apparently at 1% in 2009 and now appears at 2%.

There's probably a margin of error in any of these measurements, but I don't think this constitutes the oscillation you think it does, because these measurements were taken in very different ways.

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[Lonewolf666]

Also, the numbers at Netmarketshare sometimes have weird fluctuations.

Windows XP, for instance, dipped to 13,57% in Nov. 2014, then recovered to 19.15% until Feb. 2015. After that it finally started losing market share again, as expected from an old system without support.

Considering that, I won't celebrate the Year Of Linux On The Desktop yet, even if it is tempting ;-)

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[haruchai]

A fair point, which I think also implies the growth may be coming almost entirely from the less-developed world.
A more interesting stat is the dominance of Chrome over all other browsers and the fact that *Safari* is ahead of Firefox???

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[jellomizer]

However this is desktop share. They fail to report mobile devices. That means Linux is growing market share in a shrinking market. It is the Linux users are now switching off as fast as Windows and Mac. The percent is a dangerous way to use math to lie to the public about the truth.

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[Ol Olsoc]

Also, the numbers at Netmarketshare sometimes have weird fluctuations.

Windows XP, for instance, dipped to 13,57% in Nov. 2014, then recovered to 19.15% until Feb. 2015. After that it finally started losing market share again, as expected from an old system without support.

Considering that, I won't celebrate the Year Of Linux On The Desktop yet, even if it is tempting ;-)

I won't ever celebrate that even if it does happen.

I never did quite understand why some folks even care. I picked every aspect of my life, from career to hobbies to computer Operating system because that's what I thought was interesting or what worked for me.

Then again, I don't drive a Toyota Corolla, or find Kim Kardashian remotely attractive, two on the most popular list

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[bbelt16ag]

you know I have found that OSS users have seen what the commons uses and picked up their hardware and RAN the other way along time ago. Desktop users %? who cares if the rest of the world continues to use junk?

Re:Linux was at 2% in 2004, and 1% in 2009!

[NotInHere]

66% of all mobile devices use the Linux kernel: https://www.netmarketshare.com...

Yes, Android is not GNU/Linux, but ChromeOS (which counts as "Linux" on the desktop as well), isn't really GNU/Linux either. Yes, it contains more GNU/Linux components than Android, but its too different from a real GNU/Linux OS to count one, especially because of its DRM and limited functionality to "HTML apps only".

Meanwhile...

[wbr1]

...auto play video ads on /. cause it to fall below 2% readership in the tech news sector.

. Come on whiplash, you can do better. I, and probably most others on here use ad blockers. I happen to be on mobile with no block, and I'm assaulted.

. I admire some of the changes since dice, but this? I have been a member, under varying names since 96 or 97. It may be time to head to ars or soylent news.

Re: Meanwhile...

[Tooke]

I also haven't seen auto-playing ads on my android phone. Nevertheless, the ads on slashdot are what finally made me get around to setting up an adblocker for it.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Teckla]

...auto play video ads on /. cause it to fall below 2% readership in the tech news sector.

. Come on whiplash, you can do better. I, and probably most others on here use ad blockers. I happen to be on mobile with no block, and I'm assaulted.

. I admire some of the changes since dice, but this? I have been a member, under varying names since 96 or 97. It may be time to head to ars or soylent news.

To add to this... They didn't really remove auto-refresh, and going to the next page of stories on Mobile Safari, for some bizarre reason, leaves you at the bottom of the new page, rather than the top.

Starting to think all the sweet talk from whiplash was just pillow talk. Sigh.

desktop computers still sell?

[swell]

Could the new 'prominence' of Linux be because normal people don't use desktop computers any more? Only senior citizens still using their grandson's hand-me-up, some hard core gamers and Linux geeks still use them. And confess- how many of you are still using a green screen CRT monitor?

Re: desktop computers still sell?

[spectrum-]

It could also be that corporate and educational implementations that people are looking at ltsp and equivalent vdi thin client solutions using Linux?

Windows licencing and some of the Citrix/VMware stuff can be hideously expensive to implement. Aside of browser agent strings, I suspect traditional desktop solutions are being bolstered by exorbitant licence costs in many businesses. Software like x2go and ltsp could start to make some more traction here if they manage to get more diverse client support for tablets and phones etc.

It's not just the home user market that's important anymore.

Re:desktop computers still sell?

[Dega704]

Yeah, because I'm totally going to trade out my triple monitor setup at work so I can write documents, track emails, design network diagrams, parse logs, run multiple virtual machines, and do Webex sessions with enterprise customers on a F***ing 10 inch iPad. Are you touched in the head?

Re:desktop computers still sell?

[armanox]

Odd, because I support hundreds of users (all under the age of 60, with the exception of some of the C-levels) who use desktops every day. For that matter, we are moving people back to desktops over laptops.

Call me when it gets a serious MS Office contender

[bogaboga]

While I congratulate Linux and its 'army', it will not be useful for me unless it gets a credible MS Office contender. I mean, this potential replacement should have good documentation and a [native] programmable language. Think VBA for Office apps.

My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[I'm New Around Here]

I bought if off ebay last year, when my Windows XP laptop failed. Windows 8.0 with no shell modifications.

I have fun showing people how horrible the interface is.

I'm going to upgrade the hard drive to a solid state drive soon, and then upgrade the OS to 8.1. This will be after Microsoft stops tying to hijack it to Windows10 - Spyware Edition.

Re:My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[SeaFox]

I was just about to ask why people were still on 8.0. It's unsupported now and pretty buggy.
Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell and you have as close to current Windows as you can get w/o the spyware.

Re:My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[I'm New Around Here]

I completely agree. I just need to have the extra cash to get the SSD first. I want to keep the current hard drive as a backup to original state if need be. I don't know if upgrading to 8.1 will mess up that plan.

Plus, right now I still get to show people why version 8.0 was so despised. Most never saw it because they didn't buy a new computer when it was standard.

Re:My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[armanox]

Process Hacker? How does it compare to Process Explorer?

Re: My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[I'm New Around Here]

You need to get a life.

Says an anonymous coward on Slashdot. On a Saturday night. On a holiday weekend.

Re: My current laptop is Windows 8.0

[I'm New Around Here]

They don't have Saturday's where you live?

2017 will be the year of linux on desktop!

[nerdyalien]

I mean seriously... M$ is doing a great job on that... check here:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/...

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[wierd_w]

MSoffice 2007 runs in WINE just fine.

No part of the EULA insists it be installed on a windows machine.

Office is not denied to you on Linux.

That's W3Schools, but at the non-tech end

[93 Escort Wagon]

On my (unfortunately quite neglected) gardening website, for 2016 I see:

Windows 40.55%
iOS 26.24%
Android 17.12%
Mac 12.40%
Linux 1.52%

Chrome 38.31%
Safari 30.31%
Firefox 12.60%
IE 10.30%
Edge 3.62%

I found it rather funny that I got four hits from a Nintendo Wii.

Re:That's W3Schools, but at the non-tech end

[EmeraldBot]

On my (unfortunately quite neglected) gardening website, for 2016 I see:

Windows 40.55% iOS 26.24% Android 17.12% Mac 12.40% Linux 1.52%

Chrome 38.31% Safari 30.31% Firefox 12.60% IE 10.30% Edge 3.62%

I found it rather funny that I got four hits from a Nintendo Wii.

I've gotten hits from wacky devices too, such as a PS3, a PSP, some Windows 95 IE user, and what I believe was a Blackberry of some sort. It's really neat to see what people still browse with! Though I don't think my website would even display correctly in a version of IE that runs on Windows 95...

Re:That's W3Schools, but at the non-tech end

[bazorg]

Thanks for these stats. Considering how widespread neglected gardening is, these figures are probably a meaningful sample.

Re:That's W3Schools, but at the non-tech end

[93 Escort Wagon]

Brilliant!

Actually, I wonder if I could turn that concept into an article somehow. ;-)

Re:One of the reasons: Effective communication

[Crashmarik]

I don't disagree but examples make the case better.

I remember...

[SeaFox]

back when it was MacOS hovering around 2% market share.

Re: M$ fail

[Crashmarik]

What the fuck are you talking about? There have been serious attempts made, such as Ubuntu/Linux Mint and SteamOS. Linux distros can't just be made as drop-in replacements for Windows, they need developer and hardware support. Fortunately it seems as if support is gathering now, especially with Valve backing their own Linux which is aimed at gaming.

There's the real problem "Their own Linux" There's just too many of the things.

That said I just recently installed Kubuntu on an old Tower.

Re:So this is the year?

[BarbaraHudson]

Too bad that desktops represent both a dwindling share of the market and a decline in absolute terms.

I preferred counter culture

[aspx]

So basically, Mac users can make fun of us now? How humiliating.

Re:I preferred counter culture

[Lisias]

So basically, Mac users can make fun of us now? How humiliating.

Surprised? Lot of us jumped ship from Linux at the Gnome Desktop 3 fiasco. =/

Re:I preferred counter culture

[terjeber]

Now? When were they not able to? Not strange though, there is no better Unix desktop OS than OSX (now macOS) so...

Re:I preferred counter culture

[Lisias]

> Lot of us jumped ship from Linux at the Gnome Desktop 3 fiasco.

Did you never learn how to install and select KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Mint, Cinnamon, or others ?

Yes. I do it now and then on XQuartz to probe the scene and see if there's hope of coming back. ;-)

Seriously, KDE is terrible - if I enjoyed Windows, I would use Windows, no need for a half-baked free clone (QT is nice, however, I give them that).

By Mint you mean MATE, right? Well... MATE was a short term solution, but since everything and the kitchen's sink are being ported to Gnome3, on the long term my desktop would be driven to irrelevance.

Cinnamon? Seriously? Why would I accept all the problems of the Gnome3 to get half the benefits from the Gnome 2?

On the long run, the fact is that my time is expensive nowadays, I'm not a Linux evangelist those bills were paid by my parents anymore.

Re:M$ fail

[Opportunist]

So I wasn't the only one noticing that little tidbit.

To think: They pretty much bombarded every single user of Windows 7 and 8 with "OH LOOKY IT IS FREEEEEEE!" spam over and over and over and over, even went as far as trying to trick people into switching over, and STILL only about a third of the users (and that's even assuming that every single Win10 installation is a switch and none have simply had no choice because their new system came with Win10 and no other option) made the move.

This speaks volumes on how well received this OS is by the user base.

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[Blaskowicz]

Does it run in Ubuntu 12.04's Wine?

That's the main, or only objection I have. I suppose most people have the "apt-get install" version of Wine and not quite the freshest and latest, thus one may read reports of "Game X works perfectly" and not witness the same result.

Safari has monopoly on iOS

[tepples]

Safari is the only browser allowed to run on iOS. Browsers from the App Store are either wrappers around WebKit, which is the same engine used by Safari, or (in the case of Opera Mini) remote desktop to a browser running elsewhere.

Re:Safari has monopoly on iOS

[runningduck]

Both Chrome and Firefox are available on iOS. Apple's restriction is that browsers must use WebKit. This was not a problem for Chrome, but Firefox had to be repackaged with WebKit.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Safari has monopoly on iOS

[tepples]

Browsers from the App Store are either wrappers around WebKit, which is the same engine used by Safari

Apple's restriction is that browsers must use WebKit.

That's what I said.

Both Chrome and Firefox are available on iOS.

But are they counted as Chrome hits and Firefox hits, or are they counted as Safari hits because they use WebKit?

And just to make sure I'm up to date with the latest changes to iOS, has Apple started to let the user change the default browser? Or do users end up back in Safari when they follow an HTTPS or HTTP link from within a native app?

[The WebKit requirement] was not a problem for Chrome

I thought Chrome for all platforms except iOS had switched from WebKit to Blink, a fork of WebKit. Or is there still a lot of upstream code sharing from Blink back to WebKit? And how well do things like offline web application support (such as Service Workers) work in Chrome for iOS?

Re:Safari has monopoly on iOS

[runningduck]

Tough to tell how the browsers are being tracked, but they are each easily identifiable. Interestingly even Chrome has a Safari fingerprint.

Safari
xx.xx.xx.xx - - [03/Jul/2016:17:17:36 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 295 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 9_3_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0 Mobile/13F69 Safari/601.1"

Firefox
xx.xx.xx.xx - - [03/Jul/2016:17:16:32 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 295 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 9_3_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) FxiOS/4.0 Mobile/13F69 Safari/601.1.46"

Chrome
xx.xx.xx.xx - - [03/Jul/2016:17:20:06 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 295 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 9_3_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/51.0.2704.104 Mobile/13F69 Safari/601.1.46"

Chrome on Linux
xx.xx.xx.xx - - [03/Jul/2016:17:27:35 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 295 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.106 Safari/537.36"

What is better is what lets you communicate

[tepples]

4) [...] The notion of which is actually better depends on what a person happens to personally prefer, and is not based on objective and universal truth.

In a case of imperfect interoperability, such as that between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, what is better depends on what lets you communicate with your suppliers, clients, collaborators, etc.

Re:What is better is what lets you communicate

[tepples]

what is better depends on what lets you communicate with your [...] collaborators

.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, etc are _not_ data exchange formats. You should be sending PDFs to outsiders.

Nor are PDFs designed to be editable. I mentioned "collaborators" in the sense of editing a document together. And no, in not all industries are the majority of employees inclined to learn LaTeX markup. So what's the alternative to an editable word processor document or an editable spreadsheet?

Re:What is better is what lets you communicate

[mark-t]

How about a text file?

Worrying about how something is formatted when you haven't even pinned down what the content is yet (since the need to edit it is obviously still there) is totally putting the cart before the horse.

Re:What is better is what lets you communicate

[tepples]

Having to finalize the content before performing any formatting, even italicization of titles of works or emphasized phrases, is waterfall in the extreme.

As for spreadsheets, how do you express a workbook with multiple sheets, each with formulas on it, as a text file?

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[tepples]

Does it run in Ubuntu 12.04's Wine?

I use Wine in Xubuntu 14.04, and it runs most of what I've thrown at it. What's blocking the LTS to LTS dist-upgrade for you?

Re:So this is the year?

[tepples]

"Desktop" in operating system usage share metrics includes both the desktop and laptop form factors. Convertible tablets that run a desktop operating system, such as Transformer Book, Surface Pro, and Surface 3, are also included in desktop OS usage share.

So are desktops declining in favor of laptops, or are they declining in favor of tablets that run a smartphone operating system?

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[armanox]

As a serious question, what's wrong with the existing options? What can you do in Office that I cannot do in Open Office, KOffice (or whatever they're calling that group now), Office365 (webapp), WordPerfect, or even Pages on OS X? I ask because I don't know of anything - every thing I need to do works just fine no matter where I do it (Okay, WP and Office have some compatibility issues, but even then I only send people PDFs).

European Union?

[matbury]

The European Union and its member states have been aggressively pursuing free and open source options in their govt. IT procurement. A number of agencies govt. agencies in several countries have already replaced 100,000's of desktop OS's with various flavours of Ubuntu. This may account for at least some of that increase.

What counts as Linux

[chipperdog]

Does Chrome OS count as Linux?

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[drinkypoo]

Think VBA for Office apps.

No thanks, I just ate. Use a CMS to build apps, don't use an office suite. Posterity will thank you.

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[wierd_w]

There's also the winePPA you can enable in Ubuntu. That gives you bleeding edge WINE builds, with all manner of fancy new features. Even if he insists on using ubuntu 12.04, adding the PPA will give him "very very recent" Wine.

The thing to be aware of-- you WILL need to run WineTricks and install the MSCore Fonts package. Office does not compromise on that. It DEMANDS real Tahoma, and real Arial.

Re:Please wake us up when ...

[nukenerd]

... Linux hits 20% or more of the desktop market

Anything taking 2% of any market is not news

News is anything that is interesting. By your criterion, self-driving cars are not news.

2%, which is much smaller than the margin of error

So there could be zero Linux users then. Oh, wait ........

Re: gaming in a virtual machine

[Blaskowicz]

Linux may be partly at fault : switching graphics card driver requires you to at least kill and restart Xorg, whereas Windows is amazingly able to switch graphics. Example : you install Windows 7 on a crappy laptop. It's stuck at 1024x768 and you growl a little. After wasting time waiting for Windows Update, you install the Intel graphics driver from Windows Update ; the screen blinks to black for a tenth of a second, then you can select 1440x900 and your 3D graphics is fast.

At least, the problem of Windows in a VM switching between VESA and real graphics may be covered.
I get your concern and that ideal set up is very complex. Thinking it should be easier if you give linux a permanent, separate GPU (integrated or otherwise) then either use dual monitors or a dual input monitor or a hardware DVI/VGA etc. switch. And then, it would be better if there existed some software signaling to make a monitor change input.
I've thought of an "offending", but likely easiest set up : Windows would be the sole user of the GPU and keyboard/mouse, at all times. The linux VM always runs, but you use its desktop and apps "remotely" through the likes of VNC, X2GO, X11 etc.
When you reboot Windows (or you make it crash) you're stuck with looking at crap instead of using your desktop linux, but Linux is still running unaffected and none the wiser. (But non persistent remote sessions are killed, so you need persistent ones)

Re:Call me when it gets a serious MS Office conten

[loonycyborg]

I think people should drop office already, both libre and ms variants, more particularly writer/word. Most of time of using it is devoted to dicking around with fonts and text layout, something that should be done automatically by a typesetting system. It's really unfair that professionals get to use real typesetting systems while rank and file amateurs are stuck setting up all this manually. Amateur nature of this software and lack of proper standardization leads to formatting breakages when moving between libre and ms and between different versions of them, something that was handled properly in TeX, which is almost 40 years old already!

"Ready for the desktop"

[Hall]

Who remembers that big push related to Linux .... back in 1995 !?

Nice, 2%

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Linux is getting close to Windows Phone in popularity!

Re: gaming in a virtual machine

[Blaskowicz]

I want to mention that graphics cards do exist that allow the GPU to be virtualized, in a way that allows the GPU to be used by multiple guests - as if you had 2, 4, 8, 16 etc. virtual GPUs.
Geforce GRID has done that for a while, but very "enterprisey" - it's complete systems in rackmounts for the server room, only.

AMD is joining allowing to use just a card. I'm discovering the final card right now. Up to 16 users on a GPU, the price is high since it's in the "pro" series with the optimizations for CAD software etc., so $2399 for something based on Radeon R9 380.
http://www.tomsitpro.com/artic...
Oh crap, there aren't video outputs! ha.

Re: gaming in a virtual machine

[PingSpike]

I won't say the host reboot issue is gone. But I will say its not pervasive and from reading, I'd say its no longer a common problem. The issue was that the graphics cards weren't responding to device resets like they were expected to.

I just got this setup. The biggest issue I had was I wanted to use Ubuntu (linux mint actually) and almost every guide is written for arch or fedora. I'm sufficiently new to linux I couldn't easily adapt the guides. Another issue is most of the guides are actually old and do things in a complicated way that doesn't seem necessary anymore, if it ever was.

Brief overview. The hardest part is selecting the correct hardware. After you need to set some modules to load on startup. (kvm, vfio or pci-stub), set a kernel parameter to turn on IOMMU and get devices for passthrough bound to the pci-stub or vfio-pci driver. This is the cumbersome part IMO and could really be improved. I think the main problem is vfio-pci and pci-stub aren't part of the kernel (they are separate modules) and don't always load early enough to grab the hardware before other drivers do. Fedora seems to have a parameter to force it to load early, but there doesn't seem to be a working one in ubuntu/debian?.

Once you win that fight though, most guides seem to suggest building scripts to create VMs which is pretty cumbersome. I think that is obsolete. All I did is install virt-manager, create a VM, install windows, shut it down and add the devices I wanted to the VM. I leave a virtual video card behind, the passed through is a secondary card...which works fine after windows starts. I booted up and installed their drivers. And then I was done. I use a KVM to quickly swap to the VM but there are other solutions.

I will say I found ESXi easier to get up and running (and ESXi 6 actually has some nice improvements here) but its really not designed to be a good tool for this particular kind of setup.

Re: M$ fail

[Zxern]

It's not just the distro's, it's also the users the drive new people away. Linux needs good word of mouth to grow. Everytime a new users comes in asking the same dumb questions and gets a bad response they tell everyone they know that linux users are assholes and not to bother with it. It's a small community and so negative replies stand out more. You want it to grow you have to reply to every dumb question that's been asked a million times, with a polite response and not just "rtfm" or "google it".

What about BSD? No desktop users? Strange!

[gnus_e]

What about BSD? No desktop users? Strange!

Re:So this is the year?

[BarbaraHudson]

Desktop, laptop, and tablet sales are all in decline. Hybrid tablets are nowhere near enough to offset the decline. Most people don't need more than a phone any more. We are in the day of the "computer in your palm" and it has kicked everything else into the trash.

So to answer your question, desktops, laptops and tablets are all declining in favour of smartphones, and this trend isn't going to change.

And type on what?

[tepples]

How should people compose replies that back claims with sources using only the on-screen keyboard of a smartphone? Or is the concept of backing claims with sources also in decline? And if so, why is this decline desirable?

Re:And type on what?

[BarbaraHudson]

1) open source for your claim in browser.
2) select "copy link location"
3) write your response, pasting in the link location.

Re:And type on what?

[tepples]

1) open source for your claim in browser.
2) select "copy link location"
3) write your response, pasting in the link location.

And discover that while you were viewing the other tab, the browser had purged the page from memory and reloaded it from the network, in the process blowing away the reply that you were writing. In my experience, browsers for desktop operating systems make an effort to keep the DOM in memory, falling back to the page file if needed, whereas browsers for mobile operating systems are far more willing to lose the user's unsubmitted data in response to a memory pressure notification from the operating system. This is true even between a laptop with 1 GB of RAM and a tablet with 1 GB of RAM.

In my experience, switching the keyboard among lowercase, uppercase, numbers and symbols 1, and symbols 2 pages to format a citation is far more painful on a 5 to 8 inch touch screen than on even a netbook's keyboard. Both HTML and BBCode are hindered by < and > (or [ and ]), ", and = being scattered among keyboard pages.

And when I make a citation in a wiki or similar, I try to make the citation resistant to link rot by copying the author's name, the title of the article, the title of the site it appeared on, and the date it was published. This requires several trips back and forth between the source and the response, and these back-and-forth trips are a lot easier with double-click-drag, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Shift+Tab, than with the fiddly long-press gymnastics that I need to use to select text on my Nexus 7 or Galaxy Tab A tablet.

Re:And type on what?

[BarbaraHudson]

So plug a standard usb keyboard into your phone. What's the big deal? Or get one of those roll-up keyboards to take with you.

Re:And type on what?

[tepples]

fiddly long-press gymnastics that I need to use to select text on my Nexus 7 or Galaxy Tab A tablet

So plug a standard usb keyboard into your phone. What's the big deal?

The USB keyboard will help little or not at all with selecting text to copy from the source.

Re:And type on what?

[BarbaraHudson]

Use the cursor keys to move around the screen. Shift key and cursor keys to select. What's so hard about that?

Re:And type on what?

[tepples]

I just tried text selection with a Nexus 7 (2012) tablet, the latest version of Chrome, and a ZAGGkeys Flex Bluetooth keyboard. On a web page, outside of editable elements (<input> and <textarea>), the arrow keys scroll the screen rather than moving the cursor, and Shift+arrow keys do nothing. Arrow keys move the cursor only inside editable elements. Shift+Arrow keys control the selection only in editable elements or if the user has already long-pressed the screen to activate "Text selection" mode. And in "Text selection" mode, Shift+arrow keys can move only the end of the selection, not the start. Without the ability to use arrow keys, I have to long-press the screen to use "Text selection" mode, and I have found that using this mode is a lot slower than using a mouse or trackpad. Furthermore, the author's name and article title are often hyperlinks, and when they are, long-pressing them shows the "Open link in new tab" menu rather than starting a text selection. I find that I often have to start the selection elsewhere and then move the start and end of the selection to the text that I want to copy.

Besides, if you have to carry a USB or Bluetooth keyboard everywhere, then what's the big advantage of that over using a laptop?

Re:And type on what?

[BarbaraHudson]

Last question first. Laptops can't receive phone calls. Kind of handy at times.

As for the selection thing, it's crappy, but the long press text selection needs LOTS of work. It's brain dead unusable in many cases. Hopefully at some point they'll figure it out, but I'm not that optimistic. It's easier to just copy and paste a link to whatever I want to reference, even though that is crappy when I want to quote only a small portion in a long screed.

Welcome to new technology - re-inventing old problems in ways you never imagined. :-(

Re:And type on what?

[tepples]

Last question first. Laptops can't receive phone calls. Kind of handy at times.

That's why I currently carry a laptop and a dumbphone: the latter to receive calls and the former for everything else. One advantage of carrying a laptop and dumbphone over a smartphone and external keyboard is that each is closer to ideal for its job. The other is that their combined monthly bill is less than that of a smartphone because carriers are less likely to insist on a data plan.

Nothing not expected

[gexacor]

I keep saying that it's totally normal Linux can't beat Windows on a desktop market and I think we will not see that in the nearest future I'm still using Windows 7 on my home PC and happy with it, and I will not move to the Linux :) Alhtough I'm using it on all my servers on the work except Active Directory domain controllers