Linux Marketshare is Above 2-Percent For Third Month in a Row (omgubuntu.co.uk) 205
For the third month in a row the share of worldwide desktop computer users running Linux has been above two percent -- up from one percent -- according to data from web analytics company Net Market Share. From a OMGUbuntu report: We reported back in July that Linux marketshare had passed two percent for the first time, and that figure remains the highest they've ever reported for Linux, at 2.33 percent. But the share for September 2016 was almost as good at 2.23 percent. It's the third consecutive month that Linux marketshare has been above 2 percent. Those of us who use Linux as our primary desktop computing platform can take a degree of pride in these figures. They do show a clear trend towards Linux, rather than away from it. But we should also remember that statistics, numbers and reporting methods vary between analytics companies and that all figures, however positive, remain open to interpretation and debate.
2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Funny)
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And always will be!
Linux 85% of new sales, desktop moved to lap, pock (Score:4, Informative)
85% of devices sold last year ran Linux. The desktop is now in your lap and in your pocket, running Linux. Windows is more popular on systems with IDE drives, PalmOS is most popular on Treo systems, Linux is most popular on supercomputers, Windows is most popular on systems that weigh between 8 and 20 pounds. Linux is most popular.
Next story / complaint: Linux isn't popular on systems installed by major corporations headquartered in Redmond. Um, okay, but anyway 85% of all new devices run Linux, period.
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Windows runs on my work laptop, but it spends 100% of its operational time plugged into monitors on a desktop, with VNC and terminal windows open to boxes running Linux somewhere in a datacenter, where I do my work designing things and writing documents.
So windows is a thin client, back from the early 90s.
If work offers Mac, that's certified Unix (Score:2)
For many years I spent all my time in "terminal windows open to boxes running Linux". When work gave me a Mac OSX machine, I was surprised how much it was like Linux. The GUI is different, of course, but open a terminal and you have certified Unix. You can ./configure && make && make install whatever you might run on Linux. If your place of employment offers the choice on Windows or Mac, you might like the Mac - even though it's from the same company that makes iOS iTrinkets.
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My personal laptop is a mac for that reason. I can open a terminal, type make, compile my latex into a document, write C or python unimpeded by the environment, sed and awk to my heart's content, edit with vim and generally use the unix muscle memory I've developed over the past 30 years.
Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been on Slashdot in a long time, but that used to be a joke around here whenever there was an optimistic news story about Linux on the desktop. I love (prefer) Linux on the desktop. Software requirements holding me back from fully embracing it.
If the software in question isn't terribly performance intensive, that isn't a very compelling reason any more. You've plenty of virtualization options at your disposal, some ridiculously easy to set up (Virtualbox).
If the cumbersome-ness of the UI or of moving data between VMs has been holding you back, I humbly suggest you consider Qubes OS [wikipedia.org], which has been promoted so heavily as a security-focused distro that many people have failed to emphasize that it's also one of the best hypervisors around from a usability standpoint. Templates (your choice of Fedora or Debian) greatly streamline the updating process and it's very easy to share the clipboard (securely) or send files to another VM on the fly, but most importantly there's one single desktop (XFCE or KDE) with one taskbar, and color-coded windows can be freely mixed from multiple Linux and Windows 7 VMs (Windows 10 compatibility in the works, but in the meantime it can still be run as an HVM.)
Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
If the software in question isn't terribly performance intensive, that isn't a very compelling reason any more. You've plenty of virtualization options at your disposal, some ridiculously easy to set up (Virtualbox).
Why would I want to run Linux if I'm just going to run a Windows VM on it?
Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Also, even if you only ran Windows 7 in Qubes (not using any Linux VMs other than the built in connectivity ones that are already configured for you), it's still actually a "Linux Desktop". You never have to look at the start button if you don't want to--all of your Windows 7 applications can appear seamlessly in KDE or XFCE.
Also, Qubes' template system can be applied to Windows 7 in addition to Linux VMs. You can[2] very easily create multiple Windows VMs based on the same base image. There are a lot of ways you could use this functionality, but one possibility is one Windows VM could be strictly offline for security, one could be a regular online Win7 VM, and a third one could exclusively use a VPN or Tor ProxyVM for internet connectivity. And any application you install in the Win7 template would automatically propagate to all VMs based on that template (multiple templates are possible, either from-scratch or by cloning.)
Almost all of this is doable using GUI tools (I think you might need a tiny amount of CLI usage for setting up a Win7 template but there are guides available. [qubes-os.org]
1. Except to the extent that using a hypervisor like Qubes is *great* for easy portability and security. System==>BackupVMs==>[just a few clicks later]==> done. Your entire environment is now be copied over and transferable to any other physical machine running Qubes. No CLI fiddling required (unless you want to), and you can even encrypt the backup without jumping through any extra hoops.
2. Well, the precise legality of this is... a gray area, but certainly you could do this legally if you had the right license from MS, or multiple licenses.
Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think I'm lying? The context of this conversation is someone who already says he PREFERS Linux desktops but is stuck with Windows due to some applications he needs. I'm explaining an elegant solution for his situation, not trying to convince anyone who is convinced that Linux desktops are far inferior to Windows' current desktop.
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Holy shit - user ids are over 4M now?!?
I have no idea how long that implies your account has been here, but I'll reply as if you are fairly new so feel free to ignore this if it is obvious to you. The moderation system is not meant to be a robust measurement of the quality of a comment. It's meant to be a lightweight feedback that means we don't have to browse at +4 to avoid the GNAA trolls and other filth who lurk in the lower levels.
There are two ways the moderation system is used:
* drive-by moderation wh
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Qubes isn't 100% perfect; there are a couple usability points that Joanna has apparently sacrificed in the name of security, namely GPU passthrough for Windows (
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I had two people different
Yoda speak I know not why did I.
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1. This can be very roughly thought of as the "host OS" but Qubes has managed to move a lot of stuff out of Dom0 for security reasons (most notably net connectivity--for updates, Dom0 has to use a special proxy through one of its VMs. From my understanding, Dom0 itself has no network driver whatsoever.)
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With Virtualbox using Guest Additions yes, you can have shared folders. I'm sure something equivalent exists in QEMU/KVM. If you need truly simultaneous access to the same file from both Linux and Windows then this would be the easiest solution (although if you were familiar with Xen I'm sure you could modify Qubes to do the same.)
Qubes is designed with high security in mind, and so its default configurat
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Best of both worlds?
I boot into my windows VM about once every 2-3 months but I can see the appeal for those who need to run just one omnipresent app in Windows.
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If the software in question isn't terribly performance intensive, that isn't a very compelling reason any more. You've plenty of virtualization options at your disposal, some ridiculously easy to set up (Virtualbox).
Why would I want to run Linux if I'm just going to run a Windows VM on it?
Why would I want to run anything in a VM when I can run it all natively on a Mac?
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What are the software requirements?
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It really doesn't matter, the desktop is dying.
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Try these:
* PDF, not just viewing, but form filling and submission. I'm told recent Evince and Okular can fill forms to some extent, but it's not complete.
* Watch local BDMV (Blu-ray Disc)
* Fill in Amazon's Excel spreadsheets with validation macros
* Debug NES programs (FCEUX SDL version lacks a debugger, but FCEUX in Wine has one)
* Play online multiplayer with friends who own copies of Windows PC games that happen not to have been ported to Linux
* Develop desktop applications that run on users' PCs, without
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Even in public departments, where forms are still used, one usually interacts with asp pages (or php) and the resulting filled form is printed to a simple pdf file as a receipt
In some cases this is true. But other cases still rely on PDF form submission from within the PDF reader. In these cases, it's either Adobe Reader or don't do business unless and until the PDF form submission is no longer required, possibly for years.
[Blu-ray] is akin to the IE/Edge-only ability to play HD video from Netflix. It sucks, but in most cases we may need to downgrade the video experience to a lower-quality one (such as the one called "HD-ready", 1280x720)
In the case of movies on disc, which is still an important feature for people who live outside the service area of fiber, cable, and DSL, the next step down from 1920x1080 is DVD, which is 704x480 (or 704x576 if you live in a 50 Hz region).
Actually, that is one reason people started to use .net, .asp or .php-based pages server validation (because a wicked user could bypass local/Excel validation and you'll have to re-validate it again anyway!).
Amazon Marketplace We
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Linux is the peasant behind the scene on everything, including "Desktop Linux"!
Linux has always been a basic OS. While bootable without any additional applications or libraries it is not very functional. At the very least you will add a libc implementation and from there many other libraries, applications and possibly window managers to have a usable user interface. I agree that Android is not GNU/Linux (probably the most common form of CLI/GUI "Desktop Linux"), but in GNU/Linux, Linux is still the peasant
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The most common "Desktop Linux" is probably Chrome OS.
Re: Android is nothing like a desktop linux (Score:2)
Re: Android is Linux hosted not Linux based (Score:2)
OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
When Microsoft releases Excel for Linux, you'll know that its time has arrived.
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Steam and multi-platform SDKs like Unity have made some pretty remarkable inroads on Linux gaming these days, much much more so than the Loki days of old.
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Gaming is one sticky point for me, but the primary thing keeping me on Windows right now is audio/music production. Ardour is a nice package (although not really comparable to stuff like ProTools) and I really do appreciate the work that's gone into it, but despite the great strides made with packages like dssi-vst and vst-bridge, there are still plenty of VST plugins that don't work properly (or at all). That's assuming you have an
Lotus 1-2-3 (Score:4, Funny)
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as Microsoft doesn't care as much about Windows anymore
Microsoft cares a lot about windows. What they don't care about is what end users think about it.
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That could have a lot to do with them giving it away. It may be a small part of their revenue but it's a core part of their strategy. e.g. Windows forms a core part of their ever growing hardware division (Surface line), it is forming the basis for their xbox division, and ... just for completeness sake I'll mention the pitiful smartphone attempts. Just because Microsoft has entered a new market where business customers with some serious money are participating (enterprise cloud services) doesn't mean they
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Just because Microsoft has entered a new market where business customers with some serious money are participating (enterprise cloud services) doesn't mean they can happily move along and let windows die.
Nah, not yet, but that will happen if things continue going as they are. The trend direction is promising.
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When Microsoft releases Excel for Linux, you'll know that its time has arrived.
For many corporate users the big thing that they need is seamless interoperation of email -- what they really mean is the groupware (calendaring, etc) that is wrapped up in a proprietary MAPI protocol. A free solution to MS exchange (all of it, not just the easy bits) that talks to MS desktops and free Linux desktop software that talks to MS exchange is long overdue.
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Excel runs in EGA color?
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Not suprising (Score:3, Funny)
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More user friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More user friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that Linux doesn't have enough software to be usable keeps coming up, and I don't get it.
Yes, there are things that just won't run on Linux, and in some cases there are no alternatives (particularly the case with verticals like, I don't know, dental records software or running a television studio, and certainly many games). But if you look at a mainstream user, who does web, email, maybe touches up some photos, writes some letters, does some spreadsheets, scans some documents, plays some music, watches some videos --- you get the picture --- everything is there and then some.
Hardware support out of the box beats Windows as far as I can see. I plug new stuff into Linux and it works. Windows, I've got to install a driver. Yes, there are a few items that won't work with Linux, or require additional software (as is the case with Windows) but they are becoming rarer, and often can be avoided.
I won't get into "the year of Linux on the desktop" --- that's likely never, given the entrenchment of Windows --- but unusable due to lack of software? That's a generalization that's false a lot more often than true.
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The people who only do web, e-mail, etc... many are ditching PCs altogether and using their smartphones or tablets. That's why desktop PCs are a declining market (although that's very different from 'dying', which escapes many pundits). Essentially, a significant percentage of number of people don't actually *need* a fully powered computers unless:
a) They require specialty software. A lot of line of business / internal software runs on Windows stacks, and it makes sense for people to have compatible syst
The internet through a keyhole (Score:2)
(c) You want a screen at least a large as a 1948 television set.
(d) You want a keyboard that lets you actually type, as opposed to the experience of poking at a keyboard with a stick attached to your nose.
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Exactly. I gave an old laptop to a female friend a couple months ago, loaded with Linux Mint KDE edition. I sat down with her, showed her how to do all that stuff on there: web browsing, photo viewing, file management with Dolphin, watching videos with VLC, etc. There was something she wanted to do (I forget now, maybe photo editing) and I showed her how to do it with some free software, and she was surprised as she thought she'd have to buy some software. She hadn't quite wrapped her head around the id
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Skype lagged for a long time but it's usable and there has been a new Linux release, finally. You can make audio and video calls without any trouble. I don't know what else you need in that regard. In the interim I started using Google Talk and that works without a hitch.
If you don't want to use a webmail service, Thunderbird works. I used it for quite some time. As the other poster said, what do you need? If you really, really need total customization and endless choice, there's gnus. (Not really joking ab
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Except for Outlook, email clients in general have really gone down the tubes in the last 5 years or so because of lack of attention, due to everyone switching to webmail (esp. GMail). Email clients are simply dying out; it's too convenient to be able to read your email on any computer, and also on your mobile phone. You simply can't do that with an old-fashioned PC-based email client.
Outlook is the sole exception. But as you've complained, Outlook just plain sucks to use. It always has, and always will.
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What's not to get?
Can it run outlook, word, excel, PowerPoint, autocad, Photoshop, and games?
Games have been discussed as a real exception, and autocad may be as well, but how many people need autocad?
As to the rest --- all the office stuff --- there's plenty of it for Linux, as is well known.
But if you insist on native Microsoft applications, you're right, just run Windows.
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It's happening again with Windows 7. Some people have to download and install USB or ethernet controller drivers.
Re:More user friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
If by "a few years ago" you mean 2 decades, maybe. But really Linux has been more user friendly than Windows for a very long time, with more support for hardware than Windows, and many great applications.
I stopped using Windows at home in 2000 and haven't looked back, any time I am forced to use it (eg. at work or at a friend's place) I cringe at how much harder it is to do anything on Windows than on Linux.
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Linux has [...] more support for hardware than Windows
Granted, with respect to all hardware in existence. But which has more support for hardware sold in Best Buy, Staples, or other major U.S. retail electronics chains in the fourth quarter of 2016? Because that's what the typical home or small office user considering a switch from Windows to X11/Linux is up against.
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Because we all know that there is never a case where someone tries to use last year's printer/scanner/etc/etc with this year's windows version, that's never happened....
You know how I got my scanner? My parents couldn't use it any more. Not because they didn't want to, but because there are no Windows drivers for it for the current version of windows. It works great on Linux.
Every single thumb drive you plug in to windows wastes time trying to install drivers, and even moving it to a different USB port seem
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tl;dr: Windows for new hardware that doesn't use a generic class driver and Linux for hand-me-downs.
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Someone who uses Linux exclusively at home isn't in a position to judge how easy it is to use?
Or someone who uses Windows at work and Linux at home isn't in a position to compare the two?
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(And I personally believe that GNOME 3 and Unity, which would've never come about if not for GNOME 3, together constitute the worst thing that's ever happened to the desktop Linux ecosystem.)
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This is something that Apple does very well.
I disagree they do it particularly well. They clearly overcompensate. The correct solution is to hide choice, not remove choice. They remove choice not because it makes life easier for their users, but because it induces a uniformity of experience... it's a branding choice, not a usability enhancement, but the fact that OS X has good usability (plus some *nix internals that some people appreciate) has blinded many people to this distinction.
The limitations of Apple's approach would become immediately clea
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Sounds more like an idiot problem. If you base the course on Dead Rat 6.6 and the dumbass student insists on running Umbongo 23.1 Farty Ferret then he's an idiot for doing that and the teacher's an idiot for not telling him to sod off.
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Also, that sounds more like a Java problem than a Linux problem.
I will risk another downmod
By this logic, "Video games not running on Linux" is the games' (or the gamer's?) problem and not a Linux problem.
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By this logic, "Video games not running on Linux" is the games' (or the gamer's?) problem and not a Linux problem.
What is (/was) the point of Java? What was the ONE GODDAMNED THING it was supposed to do that other, much faster / more expressive / more powerful languages couldn't do?
Windows-only games were designed to be Windows-only. Java was supposed to be portable and consistent, damn it. The OP said that it failed to run properly on the exact same version of the JVM ("1.7.0_111") because it was "a different build." I'm not entirely sure how that should be parsed, but blaming "Linux" as a whole is not my first
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You click on Windows it runs
That is idiot proofness that users like.
On every single version of Windows everywhere?
Windows has never been idiotproof, nor is it a very good embodiment of the "it just works" design philosophy.
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Yep, it's somewhat similar to the PDF situation on Windows: if you want to be able to view PDFs in Windows, that generally means installing Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, which is a horribly bloated and slow piece of software. You can't just click on a PDF in your file browser and have it instantly pop up, you have to wait around for ages for Adobe to load up. On Linux, there's several lightweight PDF viewers that load up instantly. On my KDE desktop, using Okular is fast and easy.
Zip files are another place t
oh snap! (Score:2)
They called it Linux instead of GNU/Linux! Stallman's gonna lose his shit again.
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In practice, "desktop Linux" implies GNU/Linux and X11/Linux. But given the level of pedantry among some Slashdot users, I personally tend to be more careful lest I run into people who sincerely suggest to use an Android tablet with a keyboard as a close substitute for an X11/Linux laptop.
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SystemD is GNU licensed, therefore it is GNU PUU
Re: oh snap! (Score:2)
I use Freebsd and I do not have that problem :-)
It's the Windows 10 bump (Score:5, Interesting)
While Windows 10 has been pushed into many computers accidentally on purpose, to many of us, Windows 10 was the final straw for our personal machines. While the awful privacy invasions and security issues of the new OS aren't anywhere close enough to force all, most, or frankly even many users to flee, plenty of Windows users are looking for an out- and those that have use cases that are compatible with Linux have moved (and in smaller numbers are still moving) for that reason.
So I think we are seeing a Windows 10 bump. Certainly Linux desktop is vastly superior to where it was a few years ago, but that's not normally the sort of thing that pushes for a change. We'll probably see it again in a couple years when Microsoft tightens its coils some more- hopefully the desktop Linux experience will be even better then!
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to many of us
Key word there is "us", here on Slashdot.
By comparison the typical user would happily buy Windows 10 on credit card, install it hold up the credit card pointing their new PC, take a selfy and post it on Facebook for all to see.
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> By comparison the typical user would ...be completely irrelevant to a 2% marketshare. We are well within the explanatory powers of Windows 10 being a spyware festival of rotten meat. I addressed this in my op with " While the awful privacy invasions and security issues of the new OS aren't anywhere close enough to force all, most, or frankly even many users to flee"....
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Evidence of the decline in usability is the sheer excitement that KDE1 was met with upon it's recent rerelease... sure nearly any Linux desktop properly configured is better than windows 10's interface. But that still doesn't make the modern desktop environments good.
KDE1 + antialiased
Re: It's the Windows 10 bump (Score:2)
Not really.
Back in the good old days pre 2011 gnome 2 with compiz and init was pretty cool. SystemD and gnome 3 brought me to Windows 7.
To this day I am still on Windows and run Freebsd as a VM. I do not trust gnu/Linux much as making it not suck is not a priority and the Windows 10 GUI is Paradise over gnome 3 or kde
Good Timing (Score:2)
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Just in PCs, right? (Score:2)
- smart phones
- set-top boxes and DVRs
- point-of-sale terminals
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Could be even better (Score:2)
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Huzzah (Score:2)
Huzzah, I say.
Linux is not really about market share (Score:2)
Quite simply without Desktop penetration this percentage will always stay low. I don't see this as a problem. Linux to me is a server solution, an embedded solution, a phone solution, but not yet a desktop solution. I suspect that if i
Re:What is the driving forces? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Windows is only cheap if your time is worth nothing!
Re:What is the driving forces? (Score:5, Insightful)
, and no real UI improvements or new features.
Which is exactly the point. Those 'improvements' are to many just an unnecessary complication. The UI of W2K was fine, WinXp could be set to look like it it.
I've put some family members on Ubuntu Mate. They love, they just use the computer for internet. The UI is more familiar than Windows 10, it doesn't get slower over time and there is a lot less worry for them for malware.
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Those 'improvements' are to many just an unnecessary complication. The UI of W2K was fine
Actually, these improvements are not so much complications as they are an act of war against users. Every time I accidentally open the (a-parrot-exploded theme) Paint on Windows 8 I spend half a minute trying to close it.
I miss W2K...
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Actually, these improvements are not so much complications as they are an act of war against users.
So Windows users will find Gnome3 just at home.
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Chromebooks?
Ever single child in my daughter's school was assigned one at the beginning of the year. And we're a public school in the boonies of Pennsylvania, not some preppy private school
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I am trying to figure out what the driving forces are.
Gnome 2 has finally become stable, in the Mate incarnation.
More likely, Steam and similar have modified the market somewhat, combined with Windows 10 being such a fustercluck that people look elsewhere.
Anyhow, the title is misleading as it doesn't qualify it to desktops. Linux marketshare for servers and Linux marketshare for mobile devices are certainly much higher than that.
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It basically boils down to neither Microsoft nor Apple providing a decent value proposition anymore.
Microsoft is doing everything they can to make people despise Windows 10, and while I like OSX just fine, it's as if Apple has completely lost it WRT hardware.
So you have a choice between using Microsoft Mediocre Crap or Apple Expensive Crap. Having been an Apple user for well over a decade, I'm thinking that my next machine will have to be a Dell XPS /w Ubuntu.
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It basically boils down to neither Microsoft nor Apple providing a decent value proposition anymore.
Microsoft is doing everything they can to make people despise Windows 10, and while I like OSX just fine, it's as if Apple has completely lost it WRT hardware.
So you have a choice between using Microsoft Mediocre Crap or Apple Expensive Crap. Having been an Apple user for well over a decade, I'm thinking that my next machine will have to be a Dell XPS /w Ubuntu.
Agreed on the OSX hardware thing - I've been anxiously awaiting for the new MacbookPro's to come out so I could finally get more than 16GB of RAM. Only to find out that Apple decided that 16GB is enough for everyone, so the new MBP has the same limit.
Looks like I'll be shopping around for a Linux laptop with 32 or 64GB of RAM. I'm very happy with OSX, but I also want more than 16GB of memory.
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and no real UI improvements or new features.
It varies from DE to DE.
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I think pirates figure in it somewhere.
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Apparently you missed the part where the summary said "Desktop computer users".
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