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Linux Desktop Market Share Crosses 3% (netmarketshare.com)
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.
I reinstalled 3715 times trying to get a thermal issue solved with the 4.10 kernel.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
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.
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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.