Nothinman
Elite Member
- Sep 14, 2001
- 30,672
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And you got those numbers from where?
If you'd take the time to learn it you'd find that it makes a lot more sense than the disorganization that is a Windows install. The whole drive letter thing by itself is utterly retarded and then tack on the fact that MS throws files around their filesystem seemingly at random.
I watch all kinds of videos on Linux every day and the only ones I have problems with are encrypted WMA/WMV files and those are problematic on Windows too because you need the right key to decrypt them.
The New Scientist, 22 Jul 2006 p49, the article "unntatural selection" on software diversity and how it affects the spread of malware. The actual number is 1.2 percent, I was being generous.
I don't know, they have not provided me with details of their methodology, although you are free to write to them and ask. They are a very well respected publication and have a reputiation for providing full and correct answers to the questions of interested readers.
Is there some reason you don't like this number? It appears quite a lot, for example, Google says 1% (rounded) of it's users are running Linux.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/zeitgeist-jun04.html
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
I install windows from time to time. I installed it for oblivion until oldblivion allowed me to play on cedega. But once the use is gone, I remove it and use the partition for playing around with new distros and such. However my linux desktop has not been removed.
Nothinman
Elite Member
- Sep 14, 2001
- 30,672
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Because it's impossible to gauge. With Windows there's licenses, sure there's a lot of people running illegal copies but at least saying "MS sold 10 million licenses last year" gives a real, verifiable number. And for Apple it's even stricter because to run OS X you have to buy Apple hardware so if Apple says they sold X million machines, you can be sure that the number of OS X installations is extremely close to that. But with Linux there's no licenses to buy and you can't track downloads because 1 download could be used to install any number of machines. Any numbers about Linux installations are pretty much blind guesses on the level of guessing how many women live in a country with no census records.
Yep.
Google pulled the web stats specificly because the reason they were increadebly innaccurate.
On their page they specificly stated that the stats are not to be trusted, that they are unscientific and innaccurate, but when people started referencing them in articles and such they pulled them since they didn't want to risk their credibility (I suppose).
Plus times changed. Linux is radically more newbie-friendly then it used to be. Lots of people use it regularly now who never could of been able to in the past and it just keeps on getting easier and better.
Meanwhile you have situations like OS X were it has been as small as a user market as Linux previously, but I read that last year that they sold 12% of all the laptops sold that year. OR last quarter or something like that.
And since notebooks sales have outgrown desktop sales that is a fairly significant percentage. If your running OS X on one computer then it makes more sense to run Linux on your desktop then Windows due to the higher compatability.
Stuff like that.
And keep in mind that the majority of people don't get to choose what OS they buy. Everything has windows on it. It's nearly impossible to buy a non-windows desktop or notebook computer unless your switching to apple. So it's not even that they choose it.
So stats on sales and such are often very innaccurate and shouldn't be trusted.
Look at it another way. In the server market everything is tracked very closely. Much more attention is paid to stats because they are easier to track and people will spend upwards to several million dollars for a single server/mainframe system.
They typically refer to it as $$ amounts sold, rather then server amounts even then. It's nearly impossible to track accurately the numbers of usage and such and people will spend thousands of dollars on reports compiled by expert statistical companies and they still can't track Linux numbers accurately.
The only reason they can track dollar amounts is becuase most companies that sell large servers are publicly owned and have to disclose such information to their investors.
Or look at this way.. I've read reports were Linux desktop adoption have flatlined at 1% since the late 90's. According to this webstat program:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
There are more people running Linux then there are running Win2003, Win95, or Win98. And that in the past 2 years it has increased from 2.1% to 3.5% and MacOS usage has increased from 1.8% to 3.6%
Also note the browser usage that Mozilla-based browsers now have over 25% of the market.
Other places still insist that it's under 10%. And that's with browser stats...
Other places will show Linux stats of over 10-15% and firefox stats of up to 60%.. and the ones I am going off of aren't even Linux-oriented things.
What you should look at is what your own personal choice would be. Stats like all of that are useless, even when your trying to figure out the market. Worst then useless they can be misleading.
The real question is what platform offers you the best system for what you want?
Personally the 'killer feature' for me is Linux is generally Free software. It's open it's secure and there are no artificial limitations on what I can do with my computer or my software. I have massive amounts of software at my disposal, I can play around with Beta software without having to join some special club or subscribing to this or that service. I don't have to warez anything I can't afford to be able to do what I want.
It's just 'nice'. That's all.
Google pulled the web stats specificly because the reason they were increadebly innaccurate.
On their page they specificly stated that the stats are not to be trusted, that they are unscientific and innaccurate, but when people started referencing them in articles and such they pulled them since they didn't want to risk their credibility (I suppose).
Plus times changed. Linux is radically more newbie-friendly then it used to be. Lots of people use it regularly now who never could of been able to in the past and it just keeps on getting easier and better.
Meanwhile you have situations like OS X were it has been as small as a user market as Linux previously, but I read that last year that they sold 12% of all the laptops sold that year. OR last quarter or something like that.
And since notebooks sales have outgrown desktop sales that is a fairly significant percentage. If your running OS X on one computer then it makes more sense to run Linux on your desktop then Windows due to the higher compatability.
Stuff like that.
And keep in mind that the majority of people don't get to choose what OS they buy. Everything has windows on it. It's nearly impossible to buy a non-windows desktop or notebook computer unless your switching to apple. So it's not even that they choose it.
So stats on sales and such are often very innaccurate and shouldn't be trusted.
Look at it another way. In the server market everything is tracked very closely. Much more attention is paid to stats because they are easier to track and people will spend upwards to several million dollars for a single server/mainframe system.
They typically refer to it as $$ amounts sold, rather then server amounts even then. It's nearly impossible to track accurately the numbers of usage and such and people will spend thousands of dollars on reports compiled by expert statistical companies and they still can't track Linux numbers accurately.
The only reason they can track dollar amounts is becuase most companies that sell large servers are publicly owned and have to disclose such information to their investors.
Or look at this way.. I've read reports were Linux desktop adoption have flatlined at 1% since the late 90's. According to this webstat program:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
There are more people running Linux then there are running Win2003, Win95, or Win98. And that in the past 2 years it has increased from 2.1% to 3.5% and MacOS usage has increased from 1.8% to 3.6%
Also note the browser usage that Mozilla-based browsers now have over 25% of the market.
Other places still insist that it's under 10%. And that's with browser stats...
Other places will show Linux stats of over 10-15% and firefox stats of up to 60%.. and the ones I am going off of aren't even Linux-oriented things.
What you should look at is what your own personal choice would be. Stats like all of that are useless, even when your trying to figure out the market. Worst then useless they can be misleading.
The real question is what platform offers you the best system for what you want?
Personally the 'killer feature' for me is Linux is generally Free software. It's open it's secure and there are no artificial limitations on what I can do with my computer or my software. I have massive amounts of software at my disposal, I can play around with Beta software without having to join some special club or subscribing to this or that service. I don't have to warez anything I can't afford to be able to do what I want.
It's just 'nice'. That's all.
As a user of both operating systems, and a realist who's more interested in getting things done than tweaking computers, I feel like responding to this.
Yes, Linux is open-source. This means absolutely nothing to 99% of the population. You can only fix bugs in Linux, regardless of it being open-source, if you are a Linux C programmer. Very few people are. Personally, I've never contributed any patches to Linux or any major open-source software. I doubt Loke has, either.
This applies to Windows itself, not to all programs you can install on Windows. Some Windows software is open source, much is not.
Windows is being developed by 10 people who spend 40 hours a week working on it. They don't get paid if they can't ship a product. They have computer science degrees. Linux is developed by 10,000 people who do exactly as much work on it as they feel like. If they don't want to work on it anymore, they stop. If they would rather spend the day at the beach than fixing the bug that's bothering you, they will. They might know what they're doing, but they might not.
This is by virtue of the fact that nobody's bothered to write spyware for Linux, not because the OS is immune.
Microsoft has been better about this lately. Also, getting things into apt packages is not instant. They are often behind the latest release of software. For instance, the latest version of Firefox, according to Ubuntu's update manager, is 1.5.0.5, when in reality it's 1.5.0.6
Use, maybe. It's different, but not really harder. Configuring it on the other hand is *WAY* more of a pain in the ass than windows. How long did it take you to get XGL working, Loke?
Only if you only install software with apt. I have several software packages that I can't automatically update on Linux, because they're not available in the update manager. You can do the same thing on Windows if you only ever use MS software.
I've never in my life heard of stability problems being brought up as a criticism of Linux.
This has nothing at all to do with being open source, and everthing to do with running as root.
How is this OS-specific advice? And even if it was, "make regular backups, cause if you try to change any settings you'll probably break your OS" is hardly a selling point.
Open-source software is not neccesarily free. Also, it's hard to take you seriously when you advocate Linux as an altenative to keygens and software cracks. It makes it sound like Linux is the choice of warez-monkey script-kiddies.
White and blue does not a Macintosh make. Go use a mac sometime and compare. Also, text-based browsers are pretty inadequate most of the time. I mean, if I was using one right now, I couldn't see your screenshot.
It's also in a window that you can move, so you can put it next to the instructions, where it's really a lot easier to read than right on top of them.
Skins and themes have been around in different software and OSes for a long time, and still don't do anything useful.
I fail to see how this is going to impress anyone, as it basically looks like a notepad window.
It's like the "minimize" button, only it requires an expensive 3d card to accomplish the same thing.
It's not that cool to most people. "Hey, in Linux you can browse the internet - only with no pictures or javascript or flash games or other stuff that you like!"
I'm not posting this to be a jackass - just trying to give a more "real-world" perspective on some of this stuff.
Yes, Linux is open-source. This means absolutely nothing to 99% of the population. You can only fix bugs in Linux, regardless of it being open-source, if you are a Linux C programmer. Very few people are. Personally, I've never contributed any patches to Linux or any major open-source software. I doubt Loke has, either.
This applies to Windows itself, not to all programs you can install on Windows. Some Windows software is open source, much is not.
Windows is being developed by 10 people who spend 40 hours a week working on it. They don't get paid if they can't ship a product. They have computer science degrees. Linux is developed by 10,000 people who do exactly as much work on it as they feel like. If they don't want to work on it anymore, they stop. If they would rather spend the day at the beach than fixing the bug that's bothering you, they will. They might know what they're doing, but they might not.
This is by virtue of the fact that nobody's bothered to write spyware for Linux, not because the OS is immune.
Microsoft has been better about this lately. Also, getting things into apt packages is not instant. They are often behind the latest release of software. For instance, the latest version of Firefox, according to Ubuntu's update manager, is 1.5.0.5, when in reality it's 1.5.0.6
Use, maybe. It's different, but not really harder. Configuring it on the other hand is *WAY* more of a pain in the ass than windows. How long did it take you to get XGL working, Loke?
Only if you only install software with apt. I have several software packages that I can't automatically update on Linux, because they're not available in the update manager. You can do the same thing on Windows if you only ever use MS software.
I've never in my life heard of stability problems being brought up as a criticism of Linux.
This has nothing at all to do with being open source, and everthing to do with running as root.
How is this OS-specific advice? And even if it was, "make regular backups, cause if you try to change any settings you'll probably break your OS" is hardly a selling point.
Open-source software is not neccesarily free. Also, it's hard to take you seriously when you advocate Linux as an altenative to keygens and software cracks. It makes it sound like Linux is the choice of warez-monkey script-kiddies.
White and blue does not a Macintosh make. Go use a mac sometime and compare. Also, text-based browsers are pretty inadequate most of the time. I mean, if I was using one right now, I couldn't see your screenshot.
It's also in a window that you can move, so you can put it next to the instructions, where it's really a lot easier to read than right on top of them.
Skins and themes have been around in different software and OSes for a long time, and still don't do anything useful.
I fail to see how this is going to impress anyone, as it basically looks like a notepad window.
It's like the "minimize" button, only it requires an expensive 3d card to accomplish the same thing.
It's not that cool to most people. "Hey, in Linux you can browse the internet - only with no pictures or javascript or flash games or other stuff that you like!"
I'm not posting this to be a jackass - just trying to give a more "real-world" perspective on some of this stuff.
To all those who quoted my little bit about gaming in Linux and then proceeded to tell me that their new games run perfectly under linux .. Did you just happen to ignore that part about hardware? All the systems you guys are running are pretty high end, I'm saying you'll need that type of system to run those games under linux. My machine, however, is a bit dated (6800/64-3000+/etc.) and does not handle WoW/HL2/etc. AS WELL under Linux. This is not to say that when I upgrade (in the next year or so) I won't switch back over to Linux when my system can handle it.
I only keep WinXP around at home for gaming. My main workstation at home is a Debian 3.1 box running XFCE which is way superior to Windows except for games of course. I've tried the cedega route but it's too much of a headache for the games I like. Or worse, a game may work for a while then a bunch of problems show up later.
At work I have no choice but to use WinXP for my desktop(cygwin helps give a unixy feel but it's still not enough) but all our servers are Linux or Solaris thankfully.
At work I have no choice but to use WinXP for my desktop(cygwin helps give a unixy feel but it's still not enough) but all our servers are Linux or Solaris thankfully.
Nothinman
Elite Member
- Sep 14, 2001
- 30,672
- 0
- 0
But even if you can't do it yourself you can find someone who can. People like the ability to take their cars to whomever they want even though they can't always fix the problem themselves.
Yes, they do get paid whether they ship a product or not. You really think the people working on Vista haven't been paid anything for the past 5 years? And the same is true for lots of Linux developers; RedHat, Novell, Canonical, IBM, Cisco, HP, SGI, etc all have Linux developers on their payroll. The difference is that the barrier to entry is lower for Linux, anyone can grab the code and start hacking at it without having to get a job somewhere or sign some NDAs.
Configuring most things is a lot easier. Editing a commented config files makes a lot more sense than clicking randomly in some UI. Now not all config files are equal, just as on Windows not all config dialogs are, but IMO editing a file that I can backup, copy, print, etc is a lot more convenient.
And XGL is a special case, it was released just to show off the progress Novell has made and isn't really ready for general consumption yet.
Considering that most people that I know are using warez for at least 1 thing on their computer it's a valid statement to make. It's a lot easier and safer to find an OSS alternative than to crack some closed source software, so why not mention it?
Not necessarily, w3m has image support. It's not perfect, but you'd be able to see the screenshot.
XGL runs fine on older cards, it doesn't have anywhere near the requirements that the Vista accellerated stuff does.
Too bad it's not that simple, and the only thing I can think of that Windows has an advantage in is number of games.
I don't think it's really easier, even for experienced users let alone 'most people', but that's not really the point. The point is you have way more options in Linux than you do in Windows, so the more involved configuration is nescesary. Server programs for Linux are a lot more difficult to configure than IIS, but you can't (for example) chroot IIS, so obviously there are no options to set that up. If you want the power, you sacrifice some ease of use, that's just the way it goes.
It takes a few clicks with SLED 10. Screenshot
The ati and nvidia download links are added during the automatic updates configuration during the install so if you have one of their cards and don't have 3d acceleration, the Enable Desktop Effects button will be a button that says to install the 3d accelerated drivers. Once you've clicked that and it downloads/installs the drivers it'll turn into the Enable Desktop Effects button. Intel cards among others already have 3d acceleration. Easy enough?
Originally posted by: ForumMaster
windows.not enough of the apps i use are for linux.
There's likely to be a Linux equivalent. As far as I can see, they're up to par on everything except games.
shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
- 17,082
- 136
This will probably start some flames, but I feel plucky this morning.Originally posted by: LoKe
There's likely to be a Linux equivalent. As far as I can see, they're up to par on everything except games.Originally posted by: ForumMaster
windows.
I got a spare hard drive and tried about 8 of the most popular distros I could find. Most of them were DVD.
In all my experiments I never found an image viewer as comprehensive as ACDSee or image editors as easy to use (with all the tools) as Corels or Adobes.
Tried searching the ACDSee website. Despite their being able to make a slick program, the website is a pain to search.
I dont think they have a Linux or Mac version.
Same thing with MS Office. So many of its features have no equivalent in OpenOffice.
If I wanted an alternative platform that still provides all the work functions, I'd have to go Mac. And I'll be damned if I go mac.
I'm not really into image viewers, but I know of ACDSee. I'll look around and see what I can find, but odds are, someone will suggest one before I can find one. As for editors; GIMP is very close to Photoshop, it's just layed out differently. Pixel is good too. Also, you can install Photoshop with WINE. =]
postmortemIA
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2006
- 7,721
- 40
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The only thing missing is the gaming support. Other than that, you can get a perfect Linux system without much hassle.
On my laptop which i use for everyday surfing, etc I have Ubuntu installed. On my desktop machine I have XP installed for gaming & music creation
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