Linux Desktop Market Share Crosses 3% (netmarketshare.com)

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Linux Desktop Market Share Crosses 3% (netmarketshare.com)

Posted by msmash on Friday September 1, 2017 @04:40AM from the milestone dept.

Data for the month of August 2017 from reliable market analytics firm Net Applications is here, and it suggests that Linux has finally surpassed the three percent mark, quite possibly for the first time in recent years. According to Net Applications, the desktop market share of Linux jumped from 2.53 percent in July to 3.37 percent in August. There's no explanation for what accounted for this growth.

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YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by Spy+Handler · 2017-09-01 04:43 · Score: 4, Funny

has arrived!
1. Re:YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by a_n_d_e_r_s · 2017-09-01 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Desktop is over. Now its all about smartphones.
  And well. The year of Linux on smartphones was a couple of years ago.
  Linux has already won. Poeple don't really know it yet.
  
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  Just saying it like it are.
2. Re:YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 05:07 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  That's what I felt too. Logically it is like this, Linux users are techie types and in order to make their systems more secure from attacks, it would spoof its system to report as a Windows OS and hence it skewed the results from market analytics.
3. Re:YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by shaitand · 2017-09-01 05:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not in business. The desktop (or usually laptop now) is still very real and really the only reason windows persists. There is less push on this front because in any organization with separate windows and *nix resources the *nix resources don't have to deal with nonsense related to individual users and most like it that way.
4. Re:YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by MBGMorden · 2017-09-01 05:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Desktop isn't really over - it's just changed.
  Personal users still use smartphones heavily. As a matter of fact I know quite a number of people who no longer own a computer and do all their personal tasks ONLY on a smartphone.
  That said, business users are just as much into the desktop as ever, and that isn't likely to change any time soon. Smartphones make for decent media consumption devices, but they're not great and working with lots of plain old data.
  Between the business sector and power users, the desktop will likely be around for just as long as mobile devices are - it just will be relegated to a niche product.
  
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  "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
5. Re:YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP by MBGMorden · 2017-09-01 05:53 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You're looking at things a bit oddly.
  For one, startups often focus on unique business sectors - some fail, some succeed, but they're not representative of "normal business". Not all business workers travel or need to be mobile. Heck some CAN'T be mobile - what we call "counter users" who sit at a counter and are there to interface with the public as needed. They're going to be in a chair in front of a workstation all day. Think of the people over at the DMV for example.
  So many people have this glorious image of the office road warrior in their heads that they forget that for a ton of people office work is just boring routine crap where you don't need to go anywhere.
  As to the dockable component - that's simply semantics. If you dock your phone and then start using an external keyboard, mouse and monitor, then you're USING A DESKTOP. It doesn't matter that the phone is doing the processing work - the platform is still desktop based.
  
  --
  "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It was me by rtkluttz · 2017-09-01 04:47 · Score: 5, Funny

I reinstalled 3715 times trying to get a thermal issue solved with the 4.10 kernel.

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Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Re:Looking at the trend by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2017-09-01 04:59 · Score: 4, Informative

It seems clear that the losses in MacOS have appeared over in Linux.
July 2017
Mac: 6.02%
Linux: 2.53%
August 2017
Mac: 5.94%
Linux: 3.37%
Unless it takes 10 Linux desktops to replace each Mac, the math doesn't seem to work...

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#DeleteChrome
"reliable" by JohnFen · 2017-09-01 05:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

from reliable market analytics firm Net Applications
I have no reason to doubt the stats, but when someone feels the need to insert the qualifier "reliable" like this for their own source, it immediately makes me question the reliability of the source.
I guess it's a variation of the rule of thumb that you should never trust anyone who says "trust me".
I would like to apologize. by Gravis+Zero · 2017-09-01 05:06 · Score: 4, Funny

I was getting my fortune read by a old gypsy woman and she said, "2017 can be the year of the Linux desktop... but there's a price." I accepted but honestly, I didn't think she could actually make people vote for Trump! ;)

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Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Chromebooks? by MBGMorden · 2017-09-01 05:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

I wonder if this includes Chromebooks? If it does, that's likely the uptick. They've saw decent adoption rates. My niece in third grade was actually just given one for the school year to take home.

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"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Android is not really a "Linux" smartphone OS. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-01 05:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

I really don't get why people consider Android to be Linux.
Is the Linux kernel present? Yeah, but it's buried so deeply that most Android developers, and pretty much all Android users, have absolutely no idea that it's there.
When you develop Android apps you have pretty much no direct interaction with the Linux kernel. You aren't writing POSIX-style applications that could be ported to the BSDs or macOS or Solaris or HP-UX with ease. You aren't using the GUI toolkits commonly used with other Linux systems. You're actually writing apps for what's effectively a proprietary Java-based environment.
When you use Android, you really aren't using the GNU utilities, systemd, X, Wayland, or any of the desktop environments typically found on a Linux system. You're using other software that is quite specific to Android.
Android is "Linux" in the most minimal sense. It clearly doesn't resemble other traditional Linux distributions. In fact, that's probably why it has been successful: a lot of the userland software that makes Linux a rather hostile environment for users has been totally discarded and replaced with far more effective, albeit essentially proprietary, replacements!
Google could probably silently switch the Linux kernel to the NetBSD kernel or some other kernel, and nobody else would have any idea it happened. That's how irrelevant and hidden the Linux kernel is to Android developers and users.
Perhaps that's what will eventually happen with something like the Fuchsia project.
We shouldn't consider Android to be an example of Linux being popular. I think it's the opposite: we should see it as Android (that is: what's essentially the proprietary software and environment running on top of the Linux kernel) being popular, and the Linux kernel just happens to be along for the ride.
Oh, this is easy. by sootman · 2017-09-01 05:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

> According to Net Applications, the desktop market share of
> Linux jumped from 2.53 percent in July to 3.37 percent in August.
> There's no explanation for what amounted for this growth.
A 30% jump in one month, after two decades of "YYYY will be the year of Linux on the desktop!" ?
The explanation is obvious: bad data.

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Easy to explain by DontBeAMoran · 2017-09-01 05:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

1. Microsoft Windows 10 which removes user control and adds spying/telemetry/etc.
2. Tim Cook as the CEO of Apple believes iPad Pro can replace computers, macOS is receiving mostly visual updates that do nothing and even removes useful features for pro users and Mac updates are a joke, they remove things users need, add features no one asked for and the machines are more overpriced than ever.

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#DeleteFacebook
No explanation? by ilsaloving · 2017-09-01 05:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

I seriously doubt that there's no explanation. IMO, it's a desperately needed correction that has been a very long time coming.
Windows 10 is the most user-hostile operating system Microsoft has ever released in their history.
Apple continues to jack up their prices on increasingly stupid hardware and are generally doing everything they can to take the piss out of their consumer base.
Chromebooks are providing an inexpensive, viable linux-based option that is is taking advantage of the not just the general frustration of the above, but also it's finding a sweet spot for people that do very little localhost work that can't just as, or more easily be, done through cloud services.
Re:Believe it or not Microsoft's been gaining by shaitand · 2017-09-01 05:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

"on the server. They've fixed most of the major issues. You still have to reboot them for no good reason, but with load balancing that's not really an issue."

The biggest issue is that it's a less capable platform with more overhead and no upside except where it supports windows desktops. Nobody uses SQL server, IIS, or SharePoint because they are the best answer to their problems, they use them because of interaction with other products in the windows ecosystem (including things produced by windows focused developers). Without the windows desktop there won't be new generations of developers and admins who took the easy path of developing and learning on the windows platform their desktop runs on. Also without the windows desktop, you have no AD servers, without AD servers the rest of it becomes a major headache and platform doesn't make sense.