Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system • Hacker News Board

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#41

Post by digi_owl » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

diafygi wrote: post #9

meri_dian wrote: post #4

As the mobile computing ecosystem matures it's becoming clear that it will mirror the PC dominated computing ecosystem. You have the major player (Microsoft/Windows in PC, Google/Android in mobile) occupying about 85% to 90% of total market share [0] while Apple/Mac/iOS will do well in the high end market and control about 10% to 15% share. iOS today controls about 20% to 25% of global market share but Android growth…

So I guess that means we will start to see a The hard part this time is all the closed source drivers. How did Linux solve that back in the 90s?

It didn't...

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#42

Post by najati83 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #32

problems wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps now is the time for us to begin holding Google to the same standard we applied to Microsoft a decade ago. The triggering factor for this was the worms though. No such similar thing exists in the Android space.

Stagefright is trivially weaponizable as an MMS worm, in fact it may already have happened

Sending an MMS is very expensive and many people don't even bother to configure their mobiles to send them because they've never used them.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#43

Post by problems » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

diafygi wrote: post #9

meri_dian wrote: post #4

As the mobile computing ecosystem matures it's becoming clear that it will mirror the PC dominated computing ecosystem. You have the major player (Microsoft/Windows in PC, Google/Android in mobile) occupying about 85% to 90% of total market share [0] while Apple/Mac/iOS will do well in the high end market and control about 10% to 15% share. iOS today controls about 20% to 25% of global market share but Android growth…

So I guess that means we will start to see a The hard part this time is all the closed source drivers. How did Linux solve that back in the 90s?

> The hard part this time is all the closed source drivers. How did Linux solve that back in the 90s?

It never did perfectly. It's about the same as it is on Android currently. All the basic stuff works but you need proprietary firmware for a few things like WiFi and cell radio. Some even have cell radio working.

Replicant has done a good job doing this on Android devices, see http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican... looks like they even have cell working on some Samsung devices.

If mostly-open is good enough though, flashing a stock AOSP build or LineageOS without GApps will get you there, you can install software from sources like F-Droid too.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#44

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

The difference being that you can install or upgrade Windows on a system without buying a new laptop or requiring support from the vendor; the vendor doesn't lock down laptops to prevent upgrades and force people to buy a new device instead.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#45

Post by dep_b » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #33

loudmax wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Microsoft put OS/2 and BeOS out of business, and nearly did the same for Apple. While this was happening, FreeBSD and Linux emerged as excellent Unix variants, so when Apple and Google went to look for their own OSs to deploy, they leveraged what was already available. If you're looking for alternatives, there is stuff being developed. Google's Fuscia is intriguing, and there are other non-Unix kernels from oth…

Lets not forget that Google bought Android, it didn't start as a in-house project. Rubin and crew had picked Linux as their base, and Java as their main dev environment, before being bought by Google.

Two classic mistakes with 20:20 hindsight. Linux makes updates more complicated because of it's monokernel and Java well.....Oracle....

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#46

Post by najati83 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #16

ygra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Android is hardly GNU/Linux, is it? Especially the GNU part is completely absent there.

The drive isn't / wasn't so much the "GNU" portion dominating as much as it was just for the Linux kernel itself.

The point of the "Linux on the desktop" meme was that everybody would start using free, preferently GPL'd software for everything. Android is far away from that.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#47

Post by erickhill » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

I've got to think this is the rise of internet/consumer purchasing power in Asia. When I look at the analytics at the company I work for, Android accounts for 9% of total users visiting the site. We are a US-based web company with a predominantly English-speaking user base. Windows still rules, followed by Mac and iOS (interestingly iOS is catching up with Mac and is nearly even).

At a high level, Android seems to have more than doubled on our site in the past two years, which seems to be a reflection more of our overall site growth. Windows is still enormous.

All snap-shotty anecdotal stuff. If you're a global enterprise beyond US/UK/Australia, I'd think your numbers would be fascinating to look at.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#48

Post by _wmd » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #44

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

The difference being that you can install or upgrade Windows on a system without buying a new laptop or requiring support from the vendor; the vendor doesn't lock down laptops to prevent upgrades and force people to buy a new device instead.

Is that our problem or Google's? You can point fingers at 50 different companies in the ecosystem, or you can collectively point the finger at the root cause. By the topic of this article, they're no longer the underdog when it comes to dictating terms to device vendors, they're the biggest shop in town and there's no reason the vulns-frozen-for-life-of-device model should continue to be adhered to.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#49

Post by JohnStrange » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #18

When I was younger there IBM, Apple, Be, and Microsoft were all working on these amazing new operating systems. Now the #1, #3, #4 most popular operating systems are all some variation on Unix. What happened? Why did no one except Microsoft come up with a new operating system worthy of mass adoption?

Because of the application barrier. It's a chicken and egg problem, nobody wants to use an OS without applications and not many want to develop for an OS that nobody uses. To get it started, a lot of resources and power (e.g. quasi-monopoly or tons of money) is needed, or you need to have some binary compatibility with another OS. The latter is difficult due patents and copyright, and because it will likely make applications slower than on other platforms.

Apple was able to do it, because they sell hardware, not software, but the transition from Classic OS to OSX was hard and rocky even for them and could have failed.

It's a pity, because neither Unix/Linux clones nor Windows are really good and technically sound desktop operating systems from a modern perspective, and it would be possible to develop something way better. As for mobile, I don't know, it's a different thing.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#50

Post by problems » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #32

problems wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps now is the time for us to begin holding Google to the same standard we applied to Microsoft a decade ago. The triggering factor for this was the worms though. No such similar thing exists in the Android space.

Stagefright is trivially weaponizable as an MMS worm, in fact it may already have happened

So... where is it?

There clearly hasn't been any major deployment of this - especially at the scale of Blaster or Conficker.

It's "trivial" perhaps for a single device but every device is different and it'd require its own exploit code, exploit mitigation features cause it to be difficult to actually exploit too - making it quite problematic to deploy in practice.