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Linux Pre-Installs In the UK Hit 2.8%
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Aug 04, 2008 07:16 PM
from the small-but-encouraging dept.
from the small-but-encouraging dept.
schliz alerts us to a story out of the UK PC distribution channel. It seems that the percentage of systems pre-installed with Linux has gone up 28 times since Vista shipped, from 0.1% in January 2007 to 2.8% last June. Still not huge numbers, but Apple did OK for years with similar market share figures. Linux's headway comes in the face of the marketing money that manufacturers pass out to distributors, money that has historically been important to their profits: "In the late 1990s competition was so keen that distributors were said to sell at or below cost and take their profit direct from the marketing funds they received from vendors. Vendors nowadays keep watch to see their marketing funds are actually spent on marketing, but distribution runs on single figure profits and vendor marketing funds are a crucial aid."
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EeePC, anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
On which note, Amazon, get a bloody move on sending me my Linux 901. It was supposed to be out last month, now you say August 11th?
Re:EeePC, anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
I own a Dell 1420n which came with Ubuntu pre-installed. There are a number of systems [dell.com] that Dell sells like this.
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Re:EeePC, anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I was surprised by the quality of the system. I had expected that Dell would do something brain-dead thus requiring me to re-install Ubuntu, but it was effectively a vanilla install with a couple extra restricted drivers for the video and wifi. I've had mine for almost a year now, going from 7.10 to 8.04 via the update utility and everything is still running great.
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Re:EeePC, anybody? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I was surprised by the quality of the system. I had expected that Dell would do something brain-dead thus requiring me to re-install Ubuntu, but it was effectively a vanilla install with a couple extra restricted drivers for the video and wifi.
You mean wifi on Linux is ready for Aunt Tillie? Oh, no. It can't be. Then all the trolls will have nothing to complain about!
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Cherry-picked numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Looking at the data, they just picked the lowest and highest points to get the factor. This is not indicative of an overall trend - I could pick March to March and say it had gone from 0.3% to 0.6% a factor of 2, not 28 - indeed from March to June of 07, things went DOWN by a factor of three...
Anyone not trying to fool themselves should really do some kind of best fit line and see that it's going at about 0.1% per month (number guessed). Yes, we're linux is making progress, and it's good, but let's be honest at least with ourselves about how much progress is actually being made.
Re:Cherry-picked numbers (Score:5, Funny)
No no no. Linux market share is booming! If your product isn't Linux-capable, you're going to get ditched on the sidelines. If your hardware doesn't work on Linux you're going broke any day now. Everybody, it's time to invest in Linux companies, this is the new dotcom era. Buy buy buy!
(Hey, while many made and lost a lot of money on the dotcom thing it sure got everything and everybody online. I'd be happy to see the same happening to Linux...)
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Re:Cherry-picked numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is terrible at predicting computing trends; hell, they failed to predict the INTERNET. However, they usually manage to come up from behind and eventually dominate the market. Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.
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If it's 2.8% in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
It's probably more like 18% everywhere else in Europe. England is the most conservative and Windows-fixated backarse of Europe.
FFS, this is the same country that made Bill a Knight. Same goes for Firefox market share
Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
England is the most conservative and Windows-fixated backarse of Europe.
No, that would be Denmark. (Yeah, we suck over here. Almost as much as the Dutch ;)
See Firefox usage, march '07 [xitimonitor.com]
Interestingly I can honestly say that I only know about one person who hasn't embraced the Fox. Who the hell are all those people ?
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it seems like only yesterday... (Score:5, Funny)
it seems like only yesterday, penetration was only at 2.7%. my, how time flies.
Ugghhh (Score:5, Interesting)
I of course have a couple of niggles but that is due to hardware and their drivers not 4 Linux kind of situation (my printer)...
Having said that, I wouldn't have enough space here to list my issues with Windows.
I do use Vista (and like it) on my family home PC. Good for games, browsing (no better than Linux) and using my printer...
I use a Windows VPC in my Windows Vista for doing specific test cases for my work (I have still to figure out vmware with Suse 11) but other than that I am Linux all there way...
So, I as a consumer for my business laptop will, from now, be asking for linux pre-installed. It is by far the most convenient O/S to date for my business needs...no doubt in my mind. Karem
Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Insightful)
If, as I speculated above, these machines are Eee PCs, then they probably stay running Linux for all their operational life. The target market for such machines wouldn't know how to reinstall an OS. Wiping a disk and installing Windows, then locating drivers for all the hardware, then setting up firewalls and antivirus... well, that's fine for the hobbyist, but the average user is just going to stick with what's on the system as it arrived. Windows needs to become a lot easier for the end user to configure and install if it's going to become a viable competitor on the mainstream ultraportable.
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, with the eee 901s it's probably better than that.
I know of a fair few folks here that couldn't get the linux 901 (distribution problems apparently) and so eventually caved, bought an XP model and linux'd it.
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I heared at least initially asus supplied instructions for installing windows and a CD full of windows drivers with the linux based EEE.
I dunno if this has changed since they started selling them with windows.
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Interesting)
The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Interesting)
You may not want to read the ZD Net article [zdnet.com] which mentions the demographics of the linux eeePC users in Taiwan, your AC head may just explode.
"Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP."
And these non-average users who you suspect are pirates buying the linux boxes to I assume install a pirated copy of Windows, that is a stretch. The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.
After years of people having to pay a Microsoft tax when they are going to buy a computer on which they will run linux its hilarious seeing people post about how the linux boxes will end up running Windows. What a hoot. :)
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Funny)
How long do these machines stay running Linux? If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:
If they try "format c:" then they'll stay running linux for a long time
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would also guess that most of the people who know how to switch operating systems tend to head in the opposite direction of what you suggest.
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Re:For How Long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah.
If you haven't noticed, most computers with Linux installed by default aren't easy to come by. The vast majority of the time you have to go out of your way to get one, and they are rarely any cheaper. In fact, Dell XPS m1330's are routinely more expensive with Ubuntu installed. The exceptions here are the netbooks, of course.
I'd wager that WAY more XP/Vista boxes get reinstalled with Linux than the other way around.
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Re:there is a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
apple makes money at 2.8%. do you really think that all these vendors pay X/each copy distributed?
On the other hand, Linux has been constantly improving on a shoestring budget so anything they make on this is more than that. I'm pretty sure there's money in there, not great money but enough to push Linux forward. If you invest in the stock market thinking Canonical will be the next Microsoft you're almost certainly wrong, but hopefully this means that in a few years Linux is a market share you can not ignore.
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Re:there is a difference (Score:5, Interesting)
One totally agnostic guy at my job, was encouraged to use Apple products by the System Engineer because it just works by clicking a button. Surely that was a bunch of oversold hype.
After my experience of transitioning from Slackware to Ubuntu, I felt that it was ready for my non intuitive friends. I told him to try it and guess what? His wife doesn't have a Mac mini, she has Ubuntu. He also runs Ubuntu on the Powerbook the System Engineer lobbied for him.
Conclusion? Linux is already on the right path, the worse that could be done to Linux, which I see popping up everyday, is to make it feel like a Mac.
No! Wrong. The Apple way encourages ignorance, and obfuscation so that it could lock in the 1 button click and conquer generation. Those like our sys admin who is lost without Apples GUI.
Nothing is wrong with a 1 button click. But a user's biggest frustration is when the 1 button click doesn't work; they're feel helpless and clueless.
Think windows and registry. Apple and its gui, with a non-standard POSIX(?) filesystem layout.
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Re:Linux will grow (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a cultural thing.
Whenever I have something reasonably complex in mind to do in Windows (let us say... some kind of manipulation of PDF files), and I think 'Somebody must surely have programmed this already - I'll check online!' - I find pages upon pages of applications promising to do just as I wish, but they're all crippleware, non-functional unless I pay somebody money for them. Or they're riddled with advertising, or worse. Because every Windows programmer who has faced this problem has found a solution and immediately had fantasies of making a million selling software on the internet.
Whereas when the same notion strikes in Linux, the results are all free software, and far more functional than the Windows shareware shite, because some hacker in the past has faced the same problem as me, and has published his solution to the community.
Windows programmers hoard their creations and try to make money from them, and no one programmer can really benefit much from the work of any other. Linux hackers release their creations freely, and every hacker can improve and build upon the work of any other. Small wonder then that in order to get any decent software on Windows, one must either pay a licence fee to a corporation and sell one's soul to an EULA, or hope to hell that some software from the Unix world has been ported across.
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Re:Linux will grow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, so? I don't begrudge paying people for their work. It's kinda' how the world works. (...) Regardless of what other people are doing, you're still whining about having to compensate other people for their work. Cry me a fuckin' river.
And trying to avoid paying is also kinda how the world works. Saying "this is payware" and offering that is a fair deal, the problem is when you're trying to find a gratis solution in the Windows world. Some are very upfront about that there's a gratis version and a payware version and what the differences are. Others are plain old deceptive, probably not to the point of being criminally fraudulent but where it turns out the gratis version is so crippled it's practically useless and only a ruse to make you pay. Or that it comes bundled with ad/spy/malware that they hid way down in the EULA or otherwise downplayed until you try to install/use it.
Open source software has a refreshing air of honesty. It tends to do as advertised, even if it only claims to do half of what the Windows solution claims. Often the shortcomings are in fact pointed out in a TODO or as potential future improvements. Just knowing the license type is generally enough, there's no reason to read to see if it requires your firstborn or anything like that. All of this cuts down on the transaction costs [wikipedia.org].
It's often been said that open source software is only free if your time is worthless. Well, in my experience trying to chase down a gratis/cheap Windows solution is even more costly than a free Linux solution. Natural selection doesn't happen much in shareware, you find oodles of crap hanging around waiting for some sucker to buy it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule but they are typically larger, more well established projects and not the kind of half-hobbyist shareware software.
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Re:Good News (Score:5, Funny)
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