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Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

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Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#51

Post by yxhuvud »

lucian303 wrote: post #22
aleprok wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU is not either the operation system as without Hurd, Linux or some other kernel you can not use the GNU tools. GNU/Linux is a collection of software which forms the operation system though this collection can contain even more software and with different collection it becomes different operation system which is why Android is Android and Ubuntu is Ubuntu, etc. But Linux will always be the key component of operatio…

And without GNU tools, Linux by itself is also useless without GNU tools (unless you can compile C by hand). GNU/Linux is the OS. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. are distributions of this OS.

I would be very surprised if it wasn't possible to compile the kernel using Clang.

Hmm. Does anyone know if someone has tried to make a Linux dist based on the similar tools the BSD world have?

I realize they probably would have to be modified quite heavily considering the architechture of BSD, but I've seen stranger things done in computing :)

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#52

Post by vidarh »

brudgers wrote: post #30
xradionut wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usenet trolls then are the equivalent of the political blog spam today. In the nineties, Linux/OSS wasn't as mature/widespread and hardware for small devices sucked in performance and price. People wanted OSes and shit that just "worked". Installing and configuring "alternate" OSes in the '90s was painful even for experienced professionals and hobbyists. And the applications and user experience wasn't that great comp…

But the average computer user cannot, painlessly. Though Linux has gotten easier to install, the average computer user is relatively less proficient than they were a dozen years ago. Linux is not tailored for most people because of its fragmentation and the depth to which FOSS ideology drives its development. Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so.

> Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this.

Supporting Windows is bothersome, to the point that thousands of companies run lucrative businesses doing so.

My personal experience is that supporting Linux in a business setting can be done with far fewer people than supporting Windows, and that seems to be a common experience.

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#53

Post by kvb »

rayiner wrote: post #24
keithpeter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the range of devices we decide to include has increased?

I think a more appropriate charecterization is that the range of devices people use for daily computing has expanded.

If someone is using an Android phone as a glorified feature phone, does that still count as "computing"?

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#54

Post by vidarh »

jeltz wrote: post #14
dan1234 wrote: post #4

I thought OS X and iOS were derived from BSD. Is the graph supposed to be generic Unix/Unix like OSs or should Apple not be included in this? Or am I just wrong?

OS X is based on NeXTSTEP which is in turn based on Mach. Mach is a micro kernel based on BSD.

The version of Mach in OS X is not a microkernel. Only the last version of Mach was a microkernel, and OS X's kernel is based on an earlier version.

And while the Mach project used a BSD userland, Mach is not really "BSD-based" other than in terms of interfaces to userland - it is based on Carnegie-Mellon's earlier "Accent" project.

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#55

Post by vidarh »

thefreeman wrote: post #45
betterunix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution" Assuming, of course, that you can actually root it. "This is a huge win for Linux." Is it? What was won, exactly? If we are not seeing a more vibrant free software ecosystem as a result, then we did not really win anything. The prevalence of app stores, the number of Android devices that are difficult to jailbreak or for whi…

Are there android devices that are difficult to root? I have only ever used the Nexus line (closes to actual Android spec), but they have all been incredibly easy to root. I was under the impression they were actually built this way on purpose.

There are certainly devices that are harder. Many relies on various bugs. Most ICS and Jelly Bean devices appears to be trivial to root due to a timing issue in the "recovery" functionality, though - there's a script floating around that claims to root pretty much everything.

Note that there are several issues: Rooting is often reasonably easy. But rooting is not enough to be able to install custom roms. For that you also need to be able to unlock the bootloader. There's any number of obstacles.

That said, there are tons of easily rootable and unlockable devices out there, so it's not really a big problem for those of us who insists on one or the other.

Especially with more and more higher end devices coming out of non-descript Chinese manufacturers who couldn't give a crap about the carriers desires, and which will start being "good enough" for more and more people (my new phone is Star phone that looks exactly like the Samsung Galaxy SIII, and while it don't perform as an SIII, it beats the pants of my 2 year old HTC Desire HD in every way and cost a fraction of what my Desire HD did)

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#56

Post by vidarh »

lucian303 wrote: post #15

Linux is NOT an OS and Linus did not create the OS. The OS is GNU the kernel is Linux. Thus you are comparing numbers for a kernel (Linux in Android OS versions) vs. numbers of OS's (Windows, OSX, iOS). This isn't a technicality either. Get it straight because as the article stands, it's unresearched garbage.

As much as the Linux kernel itself is not an OS, neither is it correct to generalize the way you do.

There are tons of devices that run Linux that don't include GNU tools.

I've personally ported Linux to devices that didn't run any GNU userland at all, yet that had a recognizable Linux/Unix-y interface.

For many applications, the differences in kernel will in fact matter more in terms of portability than the userland will - I've written more than one application where I had to deal with differences between BSD vs. Linux kernels, for example, but where the userland didn't matter one iota.

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#57

Post by vidarh »

ttuominen wrote: post #34
ivix wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "technically" running the Linux kernel, it IS running the linux kernel. It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. This is a huge win for Linux.

Android is far from a typical Linux distribution. In addition to custom kernel features (see https://lwn.net/Articles/514901/ ), most of the rest of the system hasn't got anything to do with GNU or GPL and is structured very differently from a typical distribution. O'Reilly's "Embedded Android" is a great source on Android internals. I'm not saying Android isn't good for Linux. I also do appreciate the ability to rea…

Busybox + Ash is far from typical for a desktop Linux distribution. It is on the other hand exceedingly common for embedded Linux, and has been for well over a decade.

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#59

Post by slurry »

ivix wrote: post #9
TallGuyShort wrote: post #5

Although it's technically running the Linux kernel, I personally would not consider it a free (libre) operating system as sold on most of those devices. I'm sure Linus is proud, but this seems like more of a win for Google than for the Linux community or free software in general.

It's not "technically" running the Linux kernel, it IS running the linux kernel. It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. This is a huge win for Linux.

> It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution.

Android does use GNU gcc, but not glibc or GNU tools - it uses a custom libc called Bionic (BSD-licensed) and mksh + busybox for tools (also BSD-licensed).

You don't even have to root it to play around with the shell (although you can't do much). Much to my dismay, the standard busybox does not even come with awk. :(

> This is a huge win for Linux.

Yup.

Re: Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

#60

Post by riffraff »

adrianm wrote: post #20
lucian303 wrote: post #15

Linux is NOT an OS and Linus did not create the OS. The OS is GNU the kernel is Linux. Thus you are comparing numbers for a kernel (Linux in Android OS versions) vs. numbers of OS's (Windows, OSX, iOS). This isn't a technicality either. Get it straight because as the article stands, it's unresearched garbage.

I've heard the argument that Linux is not actually an OS several times; but I must admit I don't completely understand it. Why is it so inappropriate to conflate the operating system with the kernel? Perhaps this is just the operating systems course I took in college talking, but I recall that an operating system is defined not by the programs in user space, but rather by how everything is handled behind the scenes;…

"OS" is a vague term, but for example

> Process management, threads, interprocess communication, memory management, the file system structure, input/output, network primitives... Aren't these responsibilities of the operating system?

they are, and they don't need to be in the kernel, which would be enough to say that a kernel is not an OS.

Even ignoring stuff like user space drivers/FS/network/threads, you usually use some user space APIs to interface with the kernel.

And maybe you need something to actually be able to launch programs, an init system, some login process etc..

FWIW, the definition I had in school(s) was more loose, on the likes of "the OS provides the basic functionalities to run and control programs".

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