[GRLUG] Linux use

Bob Kline bob.kline at gmail.com
Fri Aug 26 13:45:46 EDT 2011


I agree about the survey, which
is why I mentioned "taken at face
value."  It mentions the methodology,
but being just a magazine piece probably
doesn't dig deeper, e.g. to find that many
people who are forced to use windoz at
work use Linux at home.

And no one can doubt that while Unix
based, Apple's OS X is otherwise just
as proprietary as windoz.

Given the level of driver and package
support for Linux today, there's little
doubt there more to it than the simple
charts display.

    -- Bob




On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:35 PM, Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam at whitemice.org
> wrote:

> These types of surveys can't even begin to include number of appliances
> LINUX is used in; from your refrigerator [Samsung] to your TV  [LG] to
> innumerable industrial contraptions.  And nearly every HP printer model,
> and numerous Brother printer models.
>
> On Fri, 2011-08-26 at 13:24 -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
> > According to the same source, OS X has
> > about 6% the desktop market.  Now that's
> > based on BSD, which would transparent to
> > most users.
>
> I disagree with this statement.  Whatever kernel something uses, or even
> equivalent of glibc/libc, doesn't in the end mean much of anything to
> the "user".  System state, configuration, and file-location of Mac OS/X
> is quite a bit different than the FHS to which most distributions comply
> to some degree.  Mac OS/X also does not have X-Windows [by default]
> which is the defacto UI of 'destop' LINUX.  Supporting one doesn't
> necessarily buy you much in supporting the other.
>
> > So this suggests that Linux
> > as much as anything lacks a marketing
> > vehicle,
>
> This [lack of a "marketing vehicle"] has turned out to be the, perhaps
> terminal, weakness of FLOSS solutions.
>
> >  and both Linux and OS X never
> > got the $billions of training dollars from
> > corporations that windoz got.  And of course
> > people stay with what they know, so now
> > breaking in to the windoz monopoly will be
> > very tough.
>
>
>
>
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