10 years ago, when I first installed Ubuntu on my desktop at home, I thought that linux would surpass Windows as the most popular operating system within 10 years. That never happened. Why?
Tea Glorious Tea!
10 years ago, when I first installed Ubuntu on my desktop at home, I thought that linux would surpass Windows as the most popular operating system within 10 years. That never happened. Why?
Dark-Roasted but Half-Baked
On the desktop: Historical inertia and the fact that Windows fulfills the needs of billions of people.
But the desktop is only a tiny fraction of the computing world now. Linux rules the greater world by a factor of at least an order of magnitude in terms of installed systems.
Linux has already won. Linux is the world's dominant operating system by a wide margin.
Last edited by QIII; March 15th, 2019 at 05:24 PM.
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Skinny Soy Caramel Ubuntu
Most consumer computers are sold with Windows, a lot of people are worried about installing are new OS, us linux users are still surprise that people don't know what or how easy linux is.
Way Too Much Ubuntu
People are always banging this drum "it's easy it's easy it's easy" and figuring windows users don't know what is good for them. It's not easy, you are just used to it. People took years to be able to use windows properly and they weren't motivated to learn it, they just had to. Now you expect them to go through all that again when they don't have to? My god everyone would still be on XP if they hadn't been forced to upgrade.
Until a windows user can start using it and find everything immediately and do everything they want to do immediately without having to re-learn something then it won't be popular. UNLESS the marketing people can trick people into thinking it makes them look cool and wealthy, like Apple did
P.S. I use Ubuntu because it makes me look cool.
__________________
Tea Glorious Tea!
Most of what people do with a computer now is done in a browser. I am typing this now from a little chrome book that sits beside my easy chair. It does 99% of everything I want to do on a computer.People are always banging this drum "it's easy it's easy it's easy" and figuring windows users don't know what is good for them. It's not easy, you are just used to it. People took years to be able to use windows properly and they weren't motivated to learn it, they just had to. Now you expect them to go through all that again when they don't have to? My god everyone would still be on XP if they hadn't been forced to upgrade.
Until a windows user can start using it and find everything immediately and do everything they want to do immediately without having to re-learn something then it won't be popular.
It seems really easy to slip in an ubuntu CD to a home computer and install the basic system and bring up either firefox or chromium. Hook it up to a printer and scanner and learn to use the file manager and libre office and you are doing everything that most people will ever do on a home computer.
That all seems pretty easy to me, but maybe I am wrong.
Last edited by Tom_Carr; March 17th, 2019 at 05:32 PM.
Just Give Me the Beans!
Indeed, Microsoft and Apple have always made certain that schools sells their software for them. Apple has long benefit from these programmes, https://www.apple.com/education/appl...ished-schools/ though Microsoft has more money (private and public) to spend on them. There ought to be some way to discourage this, given that the schools are funded with public money and that there's a conflict of interest-- but it has gone on for so long that no one is going to think of it that way.Originally Posted by gersonhdez
In the 1980s, schools were teaching computing and no particular brand of computer was a monopoly-- the market reflected that, as did education. By the 1990s, schools decided to focus on "application training" instead, which not only provided free advertising and helped to build monopolies, it created a generation of people proud to be and self-professed "computer illiterate."
Teaching people computing via application training is like teaching culinary arts by going to a restaurant. Users would be more computer literate if they spent a little more time in the kitchen. It would reduce monopolies and give users more power over their lives. Many everyday people who think they don't spend most of the day with a computer are fooling themselves.
I wouldn't put my degree of love for Canonical anywhere near "fanboy," but if they replaced the Windows and Apple products in schools with Ubuntu, I would be about as happy as Shuttleworth, personally. It would be a leap forward from the status quo. Of course, if you want to understand why that doesn't happen-- it isn't just markets. It's the result of a great deal of lobbying that ought to be banned, or at least curtailed.
Way Too Much Ubuntu
Well one reason would be that any PC you buy comes with Windows, unless you make an effort. Most people don;t and end up with Windows. Everything is compatible with Windows. Any problems with drivers on hardware X? Well, if you had Windows it would just work, as perfectly as the supplier intended it to be. I guess that's another reason. Some hardware simply doesn't work with Linux. Are suppliers against Linux? No, it's simply a question of market share. People tend to work. What's the computer where you work? Sure, a Windows computer and you don't have any choice about that. So would you prefer to build some experience at home you can use at your work or would you prefer to know next to nothing about the programs you're supposed to use? Office is mandatory for most jobs. A pretty good reason to use Windows and Office at home. I use the term Office for that program because the MS version created that word. Lastly, education. Do you really want your kid to learn and use an OS that won't help him/her in the later life?
Free software is better in many ways. But that doesn't change these facts.
Just Give Me the Beans!
Those facts are also overstated these days. They're still facts, but the context in which they are relevant is a lot smaller than it used to be-- and free software has made that happen, despite the inertia.
You said it's a result of marketshare-- and the question was more or less, why does Windows have so much of it? In effect you are saying that it has marketshare due to its marketshare. Which isn't untrue, but it's worth mentioning. There are other reasons that marketshare perpetuates itself. Some of those are explained by markets. Others are explained by industry practices that are less than ideal for consumers, or other companies. You mentioned other factors too, but marketshare really shouldnt be the only factor in what determines future marketshare. If it does, it could be monopolistic and we should frown on and discourage that if we want rights or choices as consumers (or users, or developers.) It's not unreasonable to stand for such things, even in the marketplace. You can have such goal without being against commercial interest, but it is decidedly anti-monopoly.
Way Too Much Ubuntu
Sure. And these big companies may make errors and then they fall. Remember Nokia? They're trying to pick up the pieces of what remains of a monopoly. In the same league IBM could have had it all and while they're still big they don't have a monopoly any more. Management has a lot to do with this and responding to threats. Microsoft has lost hugely on the smartphone market and the desktop is reclining. So a challenger could make them sweat but then it should bring things that you don't get on Windows. And the funny thing is that free software also runs on Windows so... Firefox on Windows, anyone?
Just Give Me the Beans!
Freedom is a feature, and Windows will never match free competitors for privacy or choice.
Though I'm concerned about the choice front on some things, even free software these days. Overall, it is doing great. But it was doing a little better a few years ago. People need to remember that freedom is a feature, if they don't want less sympathetic developers to adopt projects, bundle them, and then make it extra trouble to separate the components.
This is a way for large corporations to adopt/extend/downgrade free software, regardless of the fact that other developers don't have to use their versions-- or that they can just take the software and decouple it again. This is generally thought of as something that needs to be proprietary for a corporation to manage. In my opinion though, it is working with several large, unwieldy open source offerings.
Only certain components are affected, but I believe it is hurting choice in our software ecosystem. Mozilla is even guilty of it, making it so you can't just use the browser with ALSA. There should at the very least be an --alsa command line option. Unfortunately, the more people couple components that should be optional, the closer we get to Windows (and the fewer choices we have.) Too many developers are making design decisions that reduce choice, when GNU/Linux was always (and could remain) very modular. The bundling of optional components should happen more in the package management, less in the development. Otherwise we do lose some of the freedom we enjoyed years ago, even with free software.
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