From russell at flora.ca Mon Mar 1 15:12:47 2010 From: russell at flora.ca (Russell McOrmond) Date: Mon Mar 1 15:12:44 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <99a6c38f1002281137w67f3422bl3b40ad7a8e78429a@mail.gmail.com> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <4B8AA448.6000404@sobac.com> <99a6c38f1002281137w67f3422bl3b40ad7a8e78429a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 28 Feb 2010, Scott Elcomb wrote: > Has anyone tried sending relevant information (perhaps including these > conversations) to the Star's editor(s)? I didn't send anything to the editors, but I did send a letter to the author asking about those quotes. I didn't hear anything back. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ http://KillBillC61.ca "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry control over my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" From marc at lijour.net Mon Mar 1 15:16:28 2010 From: marc at lijour.net (Marc Lijour) Date: Mon Mar 1 15:17:16 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <99a6c38f1002281137w67f3422bl3b40ad7a8e78429a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <201003011516.28587.marc@lijour.net> On Monday 01 March 2010 15:12:47 Russell McOrmond wrote: > On Sun, 28 Feb 2010, Scott Elcomb wrote: > > Has anyone tried sending relevant information (perhaps including these > > conversations) to the Star's editor(s)? > > I didn't send anything to the editors, but I did send a letter to the > author asking about those quotes. I didn't hear anything back. I posted your refs as a comment on the article From evan at telly.org Thu Mar 4 00:26:55 2010 From: evan at telly.org (Evan Leibovitch) Date: Fri Mar 5 22:20:30 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <201003011516.28587.marc@lijour.net> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <99a6c38f1002281137w67f3422bl3b40ad7a8e78429a@mail.gmail.com> <201003011516.28587.marc@lijour.net> Message-ID: <7fc604581003032126t1a885cat6bc4c76f5b9b68c5@mail.gmail.com> I must admit to reading this thread with a bit of amusement. It's 2010, the 11th or so consecutive "year of the Linux desktop", and we still finding ourselves having to jump up and down every time some "misinformed" reporter describes the desktop as a two-platform race. In every survey I've seen, the Linux desktop -- despite all the advances in ease of use, de-facto consolidation behind Ubuntu and creative apps -- still trails far behind Windows and MacOS in use. Windows 7 has raised the bar on "good enough", and there's still little compelling reason for most people to abandon the pre-shipped platform on their computer. We saw in the evolution of the netbook that the inertia of people to stick with Windows is still too strong to overcome easily. People who are aware of both the technical and freedom benefits of using Linux are still numerous enough to be a factor -- but just barely. IMO this is no longer (if it ever was) something to get really upset over. The desktop OS is becoming less relevant every day as more computing moves to the cloud, and in server space FOSS (Linux and BSD) excel and more than hold its own. The same things that repel casual end-users from Linux attract admins and developers without peer. On the desktop FOSS is still moving ahead, but not in the old paradigms. OpenOffice, Firefox, Gimp and other FOSS desktop applications are being increasing preferred over their proprietary counterparts. In MeeGo and Android Linux is powering an increasingly popular mobile platforms; it won't be long before the number of Linux-based cellphones outnumbers Windows PCs. And now we're seeing Android -- that's a Linux desktop, right? -- move up the food chain into netbooks and iPad-challenging tablets . I can barely remember the old Novell attempts to injectLinux into the Mac-versus-PC meme. (And it's done so much good for Novell, eh?) It's old and tired. Those who are curious can easily find where to look for more information. And those who want to try a Linux desktop have some excellent evaluation tools available. Let's be honest; the Star article was, almost self-admittedly, a light, content-free piece designed to attract hits from those who are passionate about operating systems -- and those who just like to read about conflict, real or imagined. It didn't change anyone's mind about anything. Adding "what about Linux?" comments to a piece like this seems to do little more than legitimize the article's weak premise. Does this mean conceding the Linux desktop to being a niche rather than mainstream player? I don't think you need to look far to see that this reality hasn't changed significantly in a decade. ChromeOS and Android show promise as conventional OS replacements, but the biggest encroachment of Linux is just beginning, and it fits in your pocket. I feel bad for David being misquoted, but that's hardly new to journalism. And keep in mind the unmistakable irony -- that no botched interview can mask -- that the location chosen for this Mac-PC battle was a place called "Linuxcaffe". -- Evan Leibovitch evan@telly.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.cluecan.ca/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20100304/54e8926a/attachment.html From aseigo at kde.org Fri Mar 5 23:57:42 2010 From: aseigo at kde.org (Aaron J. Seigo) Date: Fri Mar 5 23:57:48 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <7fc604581003032126t1a885cat6bc4c76f5b9b68c5@mail.gmail.com> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <201003011516.28587.marc@lijour.net> <7fc604581003032126t1a885cat6bc4c76f5b9b68c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <201003052057.43673.aseigo@kde.org> On March 3, 2010, Evan Leibovitch wrote: > The desktop OS is becoming less relevant every day as more computing moves > to the cloud, i would be cautious to buy into the hype quite so deeply in an attempt to discount how many laptop/desktop/netbook sales there are and how important rich client computing remains and is likely to remain for some time to come. > On the desktop FOSS is still moving ahead, but not in the old paradigms. > OpenOffice, Firefox, Gimp and other FOSS desktop applications are being > increasing preferred over their proprietary counterparts. OpenOffice, FF and others are absolutely "the old paradigms". > In MeeGo and > Android Linux is powering an increasingly popular mobile platforms; it this is quite true... > Does this mean conceding the Linux desktop to being a niche rather than > mainstream player? I don't think you need to look far to see that this > reality hasn't changed significantly in a decade. that's the problem, isn't it: we aren't looking far. if we look to Brazil, Spain, Turkey, China and elsewhere, a lot has changed in the last decade .. and universally in favour of F/OSS on the desktop. i think it is extremely sad that not a year after the completion of the roll out of a few hundred thousand seats serving over 50 million students in Brazil, which saw the participation of a Canadian company no less (UserFul based in Calgary), we see such statements as "reality hasn't changed significantly in a decade". it no longer phases me when i hear of 5 figure seat deployments of desktop Linux, in fact. it's great, but it's not the jaw dropping thing it was 5 years ago. (i heard of another one just last week, in fact, in central Europe) you also mentioned netbooks, where Microsoft trotted out numbers stating that it was overwhelmingly Windows that was shipping on those devices. fine print: in North America. in many places in the world, Linux is doing more than great on netbooks. in Norway, Linux has kept pace with Windows on netbooks and globally we see over 30% of the total shipments being Linux based. to be frank, it's really discouraging to be continuing to work hard on wins, wins we are making every year, year after year, only to have those who should be in our corner downplaying it. this is precisely what the remaining two proprietary vendors want to happen: pay no mind to the global market, keep the North American and, hopefully, much of the European market in their pocket because "it isn't being done, so it can't be done". bollocks. > ChromeOS and Android show > promise as conventional OS replacements, but the biggest encroachment of > Linux is just beginning, and it fits in your pocket. until a proprietary vendor in North America tells us it isn't really happening and we buy that line too? what you say here is true, though: mobile is huge for F/OSS right now and it's only going to get bigger. at the same time, we're doing quite well across the device spectrum, and that includes those laptops and desktops in the middle. let's not soft peddle our hardest fought wins, those we have on the desktop / laptop market, which still represents a ~80mm units/quarter (yes, quarter) market globally. what's really interesting in that F/OSS is treating the range of devices, from mobile through netbook through laptop/desktop through T.V., as a spectrum of devices with the same software able to (and in practice being) run on each. this is an extension/evolution of the earlier Linux kernel attacking general purpose computing devices as a spectrum from embedded to super computer. and as such, as we make bold strides on mobile, we have no need to downplay our progress across the board just because the poorly written rhetoric is getting louder by the day. the fact that it is getting louder ought to tell us all something. -- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks From evan at telly.org Sat Mar 6 06:01:10 2010 From: evan at telly.org (Evan Leibovitch) Date: Sat Mar 6 06:01:16 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <201003052057.43673.aseigo@kde.org> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <201003011516.28587.marc@lijour.net> <7fc604581003032126t1a885cat6bc4c76f5b9b68c5@mail.gmail.com> <201003052057.43673.aseigo@kde.org> Message-ID: <7fc604581003060301k5a275bb5h17f7ec5c9e5ef400@mail.gmail.com> On 5 March 2010 23:57, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > On March 3, 2010, Evan Leibovitch wrote: > > The desktop OS is becoming less relevant every day as more computing > moves > > to the cloud, > > i would be cautious to buy into the hype quite so deeply in an attempt to > discount how many laptop/desktop/netbook sales there are and how important > rich client computing remains and is likely to remain for some time to > come. > I'm not looking at hype. I was deconstructing anti-Linux FUD more than a decade ago and I have a good sense of knowing when I see it. But when stat gatherers with no stake in one platform over another start producing figures, accusations of "hype" ring hollow. I'm looking at stats related to web browser use such as netmarketshare. They show browsers that don't run on Linux such as Safari and IE counting for two-thirds of all browser hits. And that's not counting non-Linux installations of Firefox and Opera. Konqueror, the only Linux-only browser in the group, scored a whopping 0.03%. Yes, the stats aren't absolute and the geeks amongst us know how to fake the ID string. But that's still not good numbers. When the stat reports centre on the OS of browser ID strings, the situation gets worse. In one survey done last month, Linux was ID'd on 0.98%. Assuming that the error was a factor of 10, Linux doesn't crack 10% of the worldwide market. Of course I'd like that higher, but I'm not going to start hurling accusations of bias or hype without evidence. > > On the desktop FOSS is still moving ahead, but not in the old paradigms. > > OpenOffice, Firefox, Gimp and other FOSS desktop applications are being > > increasing preferred over their proprietary counterparts. > > OpenOffice, FF and others are absolutely "the old paradigms". > It's all relative. FOSS apps running and accepted on proprietary OSs are one paradign change, far more significant than you might think. Going to the cloud is another. > > > Does this mean conceding the Linux desktop to being a niche rather than > > mainstream player? I don't think you need to look far to see that this > > reality hasn't changed significantly in a decade. > > that's the problem, isn't it: we aren't looking far. if we look to Brazil, > Spain, Turkey, China and elsewhere, a lot has changed in the last decade .. > and universally in favour of F/OSS on the desktop. > Indeed. Linux has gone from off the charts to on the charts, and the wins are extremely impressive. But private sector adoption is still glacially slow. Contrast this with the cloud where FOSS platfoms dominate, even in the private sector. The success of FOSS servers and desktop apps indicate that the fear of open source per-se is gone. The slowness to adopt comes from other factors. I guess my move to cynic happened when the OLPC project had to jump through hoops to enable Windows to run on the XO1, because of customer pressure. That IMO was a fairly depressing indicator on the (in)ability of Linux to be accepted as a mainstream system, even in an environment that should be friendliest to it. i think it is extremely sad that not a year after the completion of the roll > out of a few hundred thousand seats serving over 50 million students in > Brazil, which saw the participation of a Canadian company no less (UserFul > based in Calgary), we see such statements as "reality hasn't changed > significantly in a decade". > I stand behind what I said. It's a growing niche, but the transition from niche to mainstream is still a prospect that's far away if even possible. My premise is that Linux will end up dominating, but mainly because the desktop will become less and less relevant. FOSS is winning, but the most significant wins are happening on apps and mobile. By the time Linux wins on the desktop, it won't matter because the function of the OS will be little more than launching a browser. I see much potential for ChromeOS, not so much for conventional distros unless they have similarly lean variants. (Chromebuntu, anyone?) > you also mentioned netbooks, where Microsoft trotted out numbers stating > that > it was overwhelmingly Windows that was shipping on those devices. fine > print: > in North America. in many places in the world, Linux is doing more than > great > on netbooks. in Norway, Linux has kept pace with Windows on netbooks and > globally we see over 30% of the total shipments being Linux based. > Source? In North America it's no contest. Not because Microsoft says so but what I see with my own eyes. I'm typing this message on an Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and it too months from the time I bought my Asus to when the wireless was properly supported. Suspend works most of the time now but not always. And making the external display work well is like stepping up to a roulette wheel. I'm patient, I know enough to look for backports, and I have a Launchpad account that I use far more often than I'd like. Most other end-users are not as patient, nor should they be. Booting everything Windows works first time. The fact that the UNR user interface is far better than Windows for small screens is lost on people when things simply don't work as they should. That's not Microsoft hype, that's someone with 15 years of admining Linux systems fighting with wireless drivers on a supposedly-well-supported EeePC. If I was not technically minded and was told I'd have to read the WiFi Howto(and follow its many instructions) just to make my laptop work right -- something that comes naturally under Windows -- I'd return it too. Now... Android on the netbook ... THAT has a real shot of upending Windows and maybe even Apple. I'll be eagerly awaiting the local launch of the Dell Mini 5. to be frank, it's really discouraging to be continuing to work hard on wins, > wins we are making every year, year after year, only to have those who > should > be in our corner downplaying it. I'm not downplaying the wins. This started about a Toronto Star article that left out Linux in a discussion of "Mac versus PC". The advocacy that's going to bring wins in Canada no longer requires the scolding of naiive journalists (if it ever did). > this is precisely what the remaining two > proprietary vendors want to happen: pay no mind to the global market, keep > the > North American and, hopefully, much of the European market in their pocket > because "it isn't being done, so it can't be done". > Apple and Microsoft/Dell/HP/etc are having enough fun going at each others' throats. Playing this as a conspiracy between them against Linux is ludicrous. But it doesn't matter. More people own mobile phones than PCs worldwide, and I'm quite happy with FOSS being as dominant there as it is in server space. In time it will compete effectively with Apple (and in devices like the Droid and Nexus One already does), and poses real threats to Microsoft, and Palm. Nokia will be interesting to watch to see whether they have enough confidence in MeeGo as a replacement for Symbian. (Mind you, Symbian is open source so even its use is a win) > > ChromeOS and Android show > > promise as conventional OS replacements, but the biggest encroachment of > > Linux is just beginning, and it fits in your pocket. > > until a proprietary vendor in North America tells us it isn't really > happening > and we buy that line too? > Sigh. It's this level of conspiracy theory that hurts the advocacy movement. Don't look for competing vendors, look for objective stats. Listen to friends and neighbours whose fear of Linux has little to do anymore with Microsoft-spread FUD. what you say here is true, though: mobile is huge for F/OSS right now and > it's > only going to get bigger. at the same time, we're doing quite well across > the > device spectrum, and that includes those laptops and desktops in the > middle. > Agreed. But "quite well" is, in the big picture, still a niche. It will be intetresting to see what happens as the cloud expands and we move further into OS-as-thin-client, as the OS choice will diminish as the function of the desktop OS diminishes. > let's not soft peddle our hardest fought wins, those we have on the desktop > / > laptop market, which still represents a ~80mm units/quarter (yes, quarter) > market globally. > Most of that market is replacement for old computers, where inertia is still a major (probably the buggest) impediment. > what's really interesting in that F/OSS is treating the range of devices, > from > mobile through netbook through laptop/desktop through T.V., as a spectrum > of > devices with the same software able to (and in practice being) run on each. > this is an extension/evolution of the earlier Linux kernel attacking > general > purpose computing devices as a spectrum from embedded to super computer. > Agreed. > and as such, as we make bold strides on mobile, we have no need to downplay > our progress across the board just because the poorly written rhetoric is > getting louder by the day. the fact that it is getting louder ought to tell > us > all something. > To say that the rhetoric is getting louder really makes me concerned, for it forgets just how bad things were a decade ago. Linux is competing now on its practical merits. And it has to fight aversion to change rather than any real love for Windows. Inertia is now an infinitely bigger impediment than Microsoft propaganda. If Microsoft hype was as effective as you think it is, the Mac would be a niche too. Stop blaming vendors for the slowness in Linux adoption. The other factors are much more important now, and ignoring them to focus on MS is a mistake. - Evan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.cluecan.ca/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20100306/0bafe4a6/attachment-0001.html From kenziem at sympatico.ca Sat Mar 6 09:22:49 2010 From: kenziem at sympatico.ca (Mike) Date: Sat Mar 6 09:22:58 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <7fc604581003060301k5a275bb5h17f7ec5c9e5ef400@mail.gmail.com> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <201003052057.43673.aseigo@kde.org> <7fc604581003060301k5a275bb5h17f7ec5c9e5ef400@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > On 5 March 2010 23:57, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > > > On March 3, 2010, Evan Leibovitch wrote: > > > The desktop OS is becoming less relevant every day as more computing > > moves > > > to the cloud, > > > > i would be cautious to buy into the hype quite so deeply in an attempt to > > discount how many laptop/desktop/netbook sales there are and how important > > rich client computing remains and is likely to remain for some time to > > come. I look at the big blue E on most desktops as the linux (FLOSS) access button. *** Google search has 71% of the market and is linux (http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/). *** Apache servers 50% of web sites, nginx has 6% (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/01/16/january_2009_web_server_survey.html), *** the routers that they use to connect are in many cases running linux -- Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600 From aseigo at kde.org Sat Mar 6 12:45:51 2010 From: aseigo at kde.org (Aaron J. Seigo) Date: Sat Mar 6 12:45:56 2010 Subject: [discuss] Most Linux Cafee customers run MacOS? Misquoted in article? In-Reply-To: <7fc604581003060301k5a275bb5h17f7ec5c9e5ef400@mail.gmail.com> References: <4B813DE4.2080103@flora.ca> <201003052057.43673.aseigo@kde.org> <7fc604581003060301k5a275bb5h17f7ec5c9e5ef400@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <201003060945.53110.aseigo@kde.org> On March 6, 2010, Evan Leibovitch wrote: > On 5 March 2010 23:57, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > I'm looking at stats related to web browser use such as > netmarketshare. > They show browsers that don't run on Linux such as Safari and IE counting > for two-thirds of all browser hits. And that's not counting non-Linux > installations of Firefox and Opera. this primarily counts the markets I already mentioned we aren't doing well in on the desktop: North America and much/most of Europe. it doesn't capture, however, the markets we shine in: educational deployments, the developing world and many government offices. web site hits are easy to measure and so are intriguing and a nice data point. but they are not reflective of global PC sales and usage. they are reflective of the computers used to visit those sites. > Konqueror, the only Linux-only browser > in the group, scored a whopping 0.03%. Konqueror has completely "lost out" to Firefox even on Linux, so that's not an interesting number. (reasons for that left as an exercise to the interested ;) > > > Does this mean conceding the Linux desktop to being a niche rather than > > > mainstream player? I don't think you need to look far to see that this > > > reality hasn't changed significantly in a decade. > > > > that's the problem, isn't it: we aren't looking far. if we look to > > Brazil, Spain, Turkey, China and elsewhere, a lot has changed in the > > last decade .. and universally in favour of F/OSS on the desktop. > > Indeed. Linux has gone from off the charts to on the charts, and the wins > are extremely impressive. But private sector adoption is still glacially > slow. again, go to some of these countries and be amazed to see adds for Linux from local/regional companies on clocks in the main airports, for instance. private sector adoption is glacially slow ... here. it's not nearly as slow elsewhere, even in some developed nations like Germany where >20% of desktops use OpenOffice and a bit more than 10% of office and governmental PCs in the last survey i saw run Linux (our lawyers in Mainze happened to be running Linux; we picked them for other reasons and in our first meeting in their offices noticed what they were using on all their desktops; they didn't seem to think it was anything special ;) there is, btw, a common thread between the countries where successes are being seen: government support from the top. in Germany there is a huge emphasis on electronic security with the government sponsoring work that results in public advisories on the matter which much of the population takes quite seriously. in Brazil there are huge investments in public education of public officials, such as a run of 10,000 booklets authored (very professionally) by prominent members of the F/OSS community there that was paid for and disseminated by the government to all public managers above a certain level in the national bureaucracy. in Spain and Portugal, the regional governments are working tightly with regional companies to find affordable and culturally relevant answers. (we're about see another 400,000 seat (not user, seat!) deployment in Portugal, btw; laptops to students of all ages in the public school system running Linux + KDE) in Turkey we have a "national operating system" project that's turning out Pardus, which is used pretty widely even outside of Turkey. the moment we take our eyes off of North America we see a growing landslide of wins. the question is: why should we bother doing that? because we have a lot to learn from those wins. because those wins will translate into new sources of F/OSS participation and powerhouses. because those wins show it can be done to those here. because those wins will be critical to ensuring F/OSS' rise to dominance in places like mobile, where so much work in that space happens in places such as Brazil (look up iNdt on the Internet) > Contrast this with the cloud where FOSS platfoms dominate, even in > the private sector. oh, absolutely, we do quite well as the infrastructure for the cloud. not that the cloud itself is made up of much F/OSS. though efforts such as Open Collaboration Services are trying to address those issues as well. > The success of FOSS servers and desktop apps indicate that the fear of open > source per-se is gone. The slowness to adopt comes from other factors. absolutely. > I guess my move to cynic happened when the OLPC project had to jump through > hoops to enable Windows to run on the XO1, because of customer pressure. none of the actual customers really cared; this was much more about pressure at the international governmental level as focused around the US efforts of Microsoft. > That IMO was a fairly depressing indicator on the (in)ability of Linux to > be accepted as a mainstream system, even in an environment that should be > friendliest to it. the OLPC project had many other issues inherent to the project that ensure it would not get far. speaking of "other factors" this is certainly part of our problem: we love to find ways to creatively shoot ourselves in the foot. > > out of a few hundred thousand seats serving over 50 million students in > > Brazil, which saw the participation of a Canadian company no less > > (UserFul based in Calgary), we see such statements as "reality hasn't > > changed significantly in a decade". > > I stand behind what I said. It's a growing niche, but the transition from > niche to mainstream is still a prospect that's far away if even possible. when we own 100% of the public school systems in multiple countries (and in Brazil, huge chunks of the University system as well), those are hardly "niches". the problem is that we tend to focus on North America and Western Europe and discount what the rest of the world is up to. it results in us focusing on failure and not learning very much from the successes we are having. > My premise is that Linux will end up dominating, but mainly because the > desktop will become less and less relevant. something to revisit in 5 years, i suppose. i've been hearing "the PC is dead" mantra for 15 years now :) > FOSS is winning, but the most > significant wins are happening on apps and mobile. again, sorry to disagree, but F/OSS is the system that the kids in Extremadura, the Canary Islands, Brazil, Georgia and elsewhere are using. those are significant wins in terms of reachs (10s of millions of people who will be entering the adult population in this decade). and yes, we have great wins on mobile and some app categories. which is great. > By the time Linux wins > on the desktop, it won't matter because the function of the OS will be > little more than launching a browser. remember Larry Ellison's thin client revolution in the mid-90s? :) what will happen at best is that rich client computing will move into the browser and use it as a delivery mechanism, but the software itself will become no less complex and resemble more and more what we are already doing (and in many cases probably -be- what we are already doing now). the cloud is being pushed so hard because it is seen as an economic opportunity and the next way to develop captive audience with the rise of F/OSS "destroying" that idea on the client side. > > you also mentioned netbooks, where Microsoft trotted out numbers stating > > that > > it was overwhelmingly Windows that was shipping on those devices. fine > > print: > > in North America. in many places in the world, Linux is doing more than > > great > > on netbooks. in Norway, Linux has kept pace with Windows on netbooks and > > globally we see over 30% of the total shipments being Linux based. > > Source? first hit on google: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5114054156.html > In North America it's no contest. agreed. (yet :) > see with my own eyes. I'm typing this message on an Ubuntu Netbook Remix, > and it too months from the time I bought my Asus to when the wireless was > properly supported. Suspend works most of the time now but not always. And > making the external display work well is like stepping up to a roulette > wheel. that part i mentioned earlier about shooting ourselves in the foot? yeah, we like to destroy our chances in these markets with the uncoordinated introduction of things like xrandr 1.2, pulseaudio and more. in places where F/OSS on the desktop -is- succeeding, the to-retail companies move much more slowly and conservatively in their products they ship. Red Flag, racking up 5 million+ retail units / year in big box stores in S. America and China (with ~80% F/OSS retention rate on those boxes in S. America), is only now moving to KDE 4, for instance. very smart. we have a lot to learn from those successes, but we'll only learn if we pay attention and stop these "at least we have other markets" cop outs. it isn't sexy work to look hard at what we are doing that isn't working. it's more fun to watch where things are already working right here in our back yard. but there is a VERY compelling model/story around 'device spectrum thinking' that no other technology out there can deliver, but it requires we do the non-sexy work of paying attention to our achiles heel here in our home markets. > That's not Microsoft hype, that's someone with 15 years of admining Linux > systems fighting with wireless drivers on a supposedly-well-supported > EeePC. If I was not technically minded and was told I'd have to read the > WiFi Howto(and > follow its many instructions) just to make my laptop work right -- > something that comes naturally under Windows -- I'd return it too. yes, this is sad. unfortunately much of the use market here has gotten behind Linux variants that are not suitable for the public. again, shooting ourselves in the foot. > > this is precisely what the remaining two > > proprietary vendors want to happen: pay no mind to the global market, > > keep the > > North American and, hopefully, much of the European market in their > > pocket because "it isn't being done, so it can't be done". > > Apple and Microsoft/Dell/HP/etc are having enough fun going at each others' > throats. Playing this as a conspiracy between them against Linux is > ludicrous. it is absolutely part of it, though we have our own hand on our throat as well. it's not a conspiracy theory, either, i get to deal with it first hand in my dealings around the world. > But it doesn't matter. More people own mobile phones than PCs worldwide, > and I'm quite happy with FOSS being as dominant there as it is in server > space. while this is true, the "desktop" side does matter to me. it does matter, for instance, that Apple still has the only compelling application store for mobile. that's a "desktop" issue (though it doesn't look it at first blush, it's in the "desktop" space that we have all the expertise needed for that; which is why a "desktop" company made that successful app store in the first place and not a mobile company.) it also matters that 80+ million "PCs" are shipped every quarter. it matters that those PCs and those mobile devices are supposed to work together. it matters that in addition to phones, there are many other device categories just as compelling which even more so have to work with PCs well. the F/OSS desktop is about a lot more than giving Linux icons and panels on the screen. it's all woven together. btw, we haven't "won" mobile quite yet: RIM still owns the lion's share of the market F/OSS is most suited for (smart phones and above), we are uncoordinated and even nascent in non-phone markets and Apple is growing very fast in these areas as well with their hyper-lock-in offerings. Android is full of anachronistic practices (http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/android-kernel- problems.html) and so needs continued "support" to go in the "right" directions. if it weren't for Symbian, with over 50% of phones world wide, joining in the F/OSS parade things would be even more gritty for F/OSS in mobile. what we do have now is momentum, however. with Symbian GPL'd and, more importantly, Qt becoming a universal toolkit that bridges Symbian, MeeGo and much more; Linux is a checkbox entry now in the mobile space that has as much or more respect as an option than any other platform in mobile. no other sector has the momentum we have there. and it's almost entirely due to people believing in and supporting F/OSS in that area that we are here now with a rosy future in mobile (even though it isn't a "done deal" quite yet :). pragmatism, effort and support have been the keys. this is what we need to do across the board. including large form factor rich client. (and much of the mobile Linux stack came directly from, and is still part of and maintained as part of, the F/OSS desktop stack). > In time it will compete effectively with Apple (and in devices like > the Droid and Nexus One already does), and poses real threats to > Microsoft, and Palm. well, Palm isn't a hard target and Microsoft is busy killing itself in the mobile space. Apple and sort-of-open mobile plays based on Linux (which Android is, btw) are the real issues. > Nokia will be interesting to watch to see whether > they have enough confidence in MeeGo as a replacement for Symbian. (Mind > you, Symbian is open source so even its use is a win) i don't think MeeGo will replace Symbian, per se; it will displace it. Symbian will continue to have it's place. thankfully Nokia has GPL'd it and brought Qt to it. but yes, it's all good news there. :) Intel pushing on MeeGo will also help. > > > ChromeOS and Android show > > > promise as conventional OS replacements, but the biggest encroachment > > > of Linux is just beginning, and it fits in your pocket. > > > > until a proprietary vendor in North America tells us it isn't really > > happening > > and we buy that line too? > > Sigh. It's this level of conspiracy theory that hurts the advocacy > movement. i'm afraid you missed my point, which was: if you aren't interested in the FUD that exists around mobile, then why do the same around the desktop? there was rampant enthusiasm with no basis some years ago around the desktop, and it hurt us. now some (many of the same people involved with the rampant enthusiasm, btw) are abandoning the desktop because "it's un-winnable, but doesn't matter" just when we are actually getting real, signficant wins and in a time where it does, really still matter. > Don't look for competing vendors, look for objective stats. i agree; where we differ, it seems, is that i'm interested in the global market and sales figures rather than trying to measure indirectly via web browser stats. > Listen to friends and neighbours whose fear of Linux has little to do > anymore with Microsoft-spread FUD. much of my day-to-day work is about exactly this. and what concerns me is that when we take lines such as the ones you've been making here ("desktop doesn't matter, and we can't make inroads there anyways") it entrenches these problems. we need to take the desktop a lot more seriously (not the hype from the early 2000s, which i was similarly against), realize it's interplay with the device spectrum and start supporting Linux variants that actually play responsibly in terms of granting a reliable user experience (and demanding such behaviour as the status quo instead of accepting more "oh look, another breakage shipped via automatic updates") > what you say here is true, though: mobile is huge for F/OSS right now and > > > it's > > only going to get bigger. at the same time, we're doing quite well across > > the > > device spectrum, and that includes those laptops and desktops in the > > middle. > > Agreed. But "quite well" is, in the big picture, still a niche. It will be > intetresting to see what happens as the cloud expands and we move further > into OS-as-thin-client, as the OS choice will diminish as the function of > the desktop OS diminishes. i've been waiting for OS-as-thin-client for 15 years. (the first 5 or so years i was involved in the industry, it was "all" rich client on local systems with virtually no thin-client hype.) it's a pipe dream. technologies displace, not replace, and thin-client computing will not displace rich client nearly as significantly as people say it will. we're just in that part of the thin- client/rich-client cycle right now. > > let's not soft peddle our hardest fought wins, those we have on the > > desktop / > > laptop market, which still represents a ~80mm units/quarter (yes, > > quarter) market globally. > > Most of that market is replacement for old computers, where inertia is > still a major (probably the buggest) impediment. if your point is that the desktop hardware market is saturated in the developing world, then yes. but that's a bit like saying "new cars are generally bought as replacements for old cars" and using that as a reason Toyota/ GM / etc ought to forget cars and focus on bicycles. it's a very flawed way of looking at a market. > > and as such, as we make bold strides on mobile, we have no need to > > downplay our progress across the board just because the poorly written > > rhetoric is getting louder by the day. the fact that it is getting > > louder ought to tell us > > all something. > > To say that the rhetoric is getting louder really makes me concerned, for > it forgets just how bad things were a decade ago. Linux is competing now > on its practical merits. And it has to fight aversion to change rather > than any real love for Windows. Inertia is now an infinitely bigger > impediment than Microsoft propaganda. > > If Microsoft hype was as effective as you think it is, the Mac would be a > niche too. depends on how you define niche, but globally the Mac definitely is a niche if we consider desktop Linux a niche. we sell ~as much retail Linux, globally, as Apple sells Macs. > Stop blaming vendors for the slowness in Linux adoption. The > other factors are much more important now, and ignoring them to focus on MS > is a mistake. i'm not focussing on MS, i'm focussing on people within our own community making boldly incorrect statements about the reality of the market today and tomorrow, about writers in the media who are led into writing articles that pile on the misinformation and about people who are giving up because numbers spewed out by various vendors[1] that are skewed are taken as dogma. i'm focusing on people who want to see the desktop surrendered because it's "too hard", "too inconvenient" or "not important". there is a much bigger picture here where we are moving forward significantly on all fronts and require all fronts to move forward significantly to continue to see F/OSS succeed in a sustainable fashion. [1] yes, including MS, such as the netbook numbers that said Linux was 3-7% of the market. those numbers came directly from the pocket book of Microsoft. that isn't a "conspiracy theory", this is what i know from dealing with that situation first hand, personally. -- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks