Tired of playing catch-up

[Johnsie]

I love Linux but sometimes it stresses me out....

I use my computer a lot for instant messaging and stuff.... I just heard about http://www.aimphoneline.com

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of AOL but if they are willing to give me a free US phone number then I'm interested in at least checking it out. Only problem is, Aim Triton does not work on Linux.... I'd love to be able to have a US phone number for my business and so my friends in the US can call me easily from their "cellphones".

Once again I'm missing out on a great new service because I use Linux :-(

I'm not blaming anyone, just saying how annoying it is sometimes to be a Linux user.

[mips]

If it's any consolation it does'nt work on Mac OSX either.

[Yossarian]

Edit: Double post

[Yossarian]

I hear you, man. This is probably linux-based OSs biggest drawback.

Not this phone thing, specifically, but just that lots of little things aren't made with linux in mind. It adds up.

[Johnsie]

Yeah... I guess it's up to us to help fix that though.

The reason people don't support Linux isn't that they are ignorant to Linux, it's that not enough people use Linux to make the development profitable.

This probably isn't a completely fair exampble but I run a website. It's not a Linux support website and it's not a Windows support website, just a regular website .. I make sure that it's W3c standard complient and fully Lniux+Windows compatible. It always disappoints me when i look at my stats and see:



Top 10 Operating Systems
Windows XP 65.85%
Other 19.10%
Windows 2000 3.91%
Windows 98 3.76%
Linux 2.03%
Windows ME 1.88%
MacOS X 1.88%
Windows NT 0.58%
Windows 2003 0.43%
Windows 0.29


Now, if I was a large company I'd obviously want to make my products work for a large proportion of uses. Is it profitable to invest in developing software for 2.03% of my users? In many cases no. I invite sny other webmasters who have non-OS subject websites to post their stats.

I've noticed the percent of Linux users rise over the last few years but obviously if it's not even beating Windows '98 then we have a lot more work to do getting people to use Ubuntu.

My opinion, if we want people developing software for our operating system the priority should be to make sure there's a decent number of people using Linux. Petitioning is useless if the owners of a company can see that only a small number of visitors to their site actually use Linux.

[Johnsie]

With regard to the AIM issue, I found this article interesting...

http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1203459,00.html

[egon spengler]

I've noticed the percent of Linux users rise over the last few years but obviously if it's not even beating Windows '98 then we have a lot more work to do getting people to use Ubuntu.

You're completely right but then again you could look at your stats and take some solace from the fact that Linux is ahead of OSX whereas most people would almost instinctively assume that OSX is more popular than Linux as an os.

If Linux is more popular than an "official" os such as OSX then that has to be something good for Linux. Or maybe just something really bad for Apple, I can't call it

[Johnsie]

Yeah I was quite glad that it was above OSX. But a little sad that it was below the now unsupported Windows 98. The reason I've asked other people to post their sites stats is that I don't think it's fair to judge the whole internet by one set of stats from one site though :-)

I think for the moment I'm just going to install VMWare Server on my Linux box so I can have the best of both worlds wihtout actually being fully Windows dependent.

I'll make sure I do all my web browsing from within Linux though :-)

Then, most of all I'm going to do MY part to increase the number of people using Linux. By showing people my computer, telling people, giving away the cd's and other such methods. The downfall of Windows '98 should be taken advantage of. Now that Windows 98 will have no security updates we should remind Win 98 users that it's not safe to use Windows 98 on the Internet and let them knowhow Microsoft abandoned them, and finnally let them know that Linux could be their ideal replacement.