Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux has changed the world. Yes of course I'm talking about the kernel, that's what Linux is. It's what it's always been. Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). Server infrastructure across the industry, including Web hosting, would cost an arm and a leg due to proprietary Unix license costs. Services like Rackspace and AWS would likely be barely viable, i…
I like Linux as much as the next guy, but if there hadn't been Linux FreeBSD would have just taken its place. Possibly more of a split between FreeBSD and Solaris.
2013: A Linux Christmas
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Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux has changed the world. Yes of course I'm talking about the kernel, that's what Linux is. It's what it's always been. Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). Server infrastructure across the industry, including Web hosting, would cost an arm and a leg due to proprietary Unix license costs. Services like Rackspace and AWS would likely be barely viable, i…
I like Linux as much as the next guy, but if there hadn't been Linux FreeBSD would have just taken its place. Possibly more of a split between FreeBSD and Solaris.
Agreed. Free/Open OS'es changed the world. Linux happened to be the most popular one.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#13>Even before the holiday buying season really kicked in, the NPD Group found that Chromebooks "accounted for 21 percent of all [preconfigured] notebook sales, up from negligible share in the prior year, and 8 percent of all computer and tablet sales through November. It's up from one tenth of a percent in 2012." Only commercial channels like schools and companies, not retail sales to consumers. That too only in the U…
Commercial channels account for the vast majority of total sales.
The report states 14.4M million sales for desktops,laptops and tablets. For perspective, Apple sold a similar amount of iPads in just one quarter.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#14On one hand, I'm happy to see the Linux kernel being used in all sorts of consumer devices. It's a real victory for the developers and for the open source model. On the other hand, it has only been successful because it has enabled major corporations to fight the mobile platform wars. Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's l…
Linux has changed the world. Yes of course I'm talking about the kernel, that's what Linux is. It's what it's always been. Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). Server infrastructure across the industry, including Web hosting, would cost an arm and a leg due to proprietary Unix license costs. Services like Rackspace and AWS would likely be barely viable, i…
"Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). "
You cant conclude that at all. The manufacturers would have had to do something else, and they obviously would have, as in many cases, they were. Android/Linux was an easy, convenient, perhaps even lazy, ship to jump to.
Which also means that one could make a case that the presence of Linux for Android use has distracted from innovation and competition.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#15I think the "Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits" argument isn't quite apt. Arguably, Windows didn't succeed on its own merits, either--it was a "good enough" platform backed by significant business acumen and, with time, platform lock-in.
That said, it does feel a little strange to credit Linux at large for what is largely an Android revolution. A good parallel is Unix and OS X; however purely Unixy the core is, it would still feel awkward to count Apple's market share under "Unix."
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#16On one hand, I'm happy to see the Linux kernel being used in all sorts of consumer devices. It's a real victory for the developers and for the open source model. On the other hand, it has only been successful because it has enabled major corporations to fight the mobile platform wars. Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's l…
>> Linux isn't something people want Check out YouTube, Windows isn't something people want anymore, not like the 90's. Give it up, more and more people want a solid, stable, secure, reliable, fast computer. When they ask their techie friends how to get that, almost invariably the answer comes back - install Linux or buy a computer that comes with it pre-installed.
Am I the only person on the face of the earth who feels like they've had many more technical/reliability issues with Linux (perhaps the blame lies with distributions in particular) than with Windows, over less time?
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Linux isn't something people want Check out YouTube, Windows isn't something people want anymore, not like the 90's. Give it up, more and more people want a solid, stable, secure, reliable, fast computer. When they ask their techie friends how to get that, almost invariably the answer comes back - install Linux or buy a computer that comes with it pre-installed.
Am I the only person on the face of the earth who feels like they've had many more technical/reliability issues with Linux (perhaps the blame lies with distributions in particular) than with Windows, over less time?
Nope. Not as a desktop platform, anyway. Ever since KDE3 went obsolete, Linux on the desktop has been a joyless pain for me. Windows is more reliable, and OS X is generally more "usable" in terms of nifty things it can do.
Part of that can be blamed on crappy proprietary graphics drivers, but only part. Most of it is just a decade or more of mediocre design.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#18>Even before the holiday buying season really kicked in, the NPD Group found that Chromebooks "accounted for 21 percent of all [preconfigured] notebook sales, up from negligible share in the prior year, and 8 percent of all computer and tablet sales through November. It's up from one tenth of a percent in 2012." Only commercial channels like schools and companies, not retail sales to consumers. That too only in the U…
Also, check out what the Amazon best-sellers are under the tablet category :-) I've long wondered if Amazon uses some specific criteria to rank their "best-sellers", or if their customers are simply very different (More tech savvy? Early adopters?) from the average customer.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#19On one hand, I'm happy to see the Linux kernel being used in all sorts of consumer devices. It's a real victory for the developers and for the open source model. On the other hand, it has only been successful because it has enabled major corporations to fight the mobile platform wars. Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's l…
Linux has changed the world. Yes of course I'm talking about the kernel, that's what Linux is. It's what it's always been. Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). Server infrastructure across the industry, including Web hosting, would cost an arm and a leg due to proprietary Unix license costs. Services like Rackspace and AWS would likely be barely viable, i…
Linux is not the only open source kernel. The main thing that makes Linux special is that it is the open source kernel that got popular. If Linux had never existed, there is no reason to believe that another kernel would not be filling the same niche today.
Re: 2013: A Linux Christmas
#20On one hand, I'm happy to see the Linux kernel being used in all sorts of consumer devices. It's a real victory for the developers and for the open source model. On the other hand, it has only been successful because it has enabled major corporations to fight the mobile platform wars. Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's l…
How would Linux success have been accomplished without integration into the current platforms de jour? This is a specious argument, to be sure. You are saying 'Linux did not succeed on its own because it required hardware vendors to pick it up and push it out there' - well, how else would it have succeeded? Linus building a hardware company? The intention behind the developers of the Linux kernel have always been: bu…
> Linux has been a very viable desktop for over a decade.
I've been using Linux regularly for the past half decade and daily for the past year as a PC (as opposed to as a development and deployment target for 12 years). No, it's not viable. Not when the competition is Windows and OS X. I'd explain why, but it'd devolve into a huge rant about poor UX, drivers, audio services, file system snafus, grub upgrades gone wrong, bad advice on forums compounding problems, all of which get brought up ad nauseum in any Linux thread. Linux is very good as a server, but that in no way translates into being a good PC.
And no, Chromebooks are not a desktop, they're "browser appliances".