[CentOS] OT: linux desktop market share more than 1%

Bill Campbell centos at celestial.com
Thu Oct 7 17:33:33 UTC 2010


On Thu, Oct 07, 2010, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>Benjamin Franz wrote:
...
>'98. But it's starting to have a visible presence, thanks to Vista.
>
>       mark "both hands on the gun, point at foot, fire!"

On the other hand, when I've attended events for developers such as a Plone
bootcamp and Python day at the University of Washington, at least 75% of
the laptops were Macbook [Pros].

I have gone from OpenDesktop on SCO in the early '90s to Linux from 1996 or
so to OS X shortly after it came out.  The vast majority of my development
is on Linux servers, but OS X Just Works(tm), and I don't have to be
constantly fiddling to get tools working.

The vast majority of desktop users simply want to do things without having
to worry about it.

We are using some Linux desktops today at clients where their only use is
e-mail, web browsing, and running a database application in a terminal, but
this is the exception rather than the rule.  The clients here not doing
general purpose desktop stuff so don't have to worry about putting the
pieces together to do their jobs.

I would compare this to my experience with cars.  Even though I built and
raced formula cars for 13 years and have had a variety of stree cars
ranging from hot rod Fords in the '50s, a Morgan Plus 4, and an Aston
Martin DB-2 Drop Head Coupe, I drive a Subaru Legacy Wagon because it
always works and goes pretty much anywhere.  While I *CAN* deal with cars
at a very low level (or could before they became controlled by on-board
computer networks), I don't want to for every day use.

Linux on the desktop is great for people who like to get under the hood and
tweak (or who have a tame Linux Geek to do it for them), but not so much
for people who just want to drive it.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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    -- Robert Heinlein



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