Windows Market Share

[Sean Hayden]

According to Net Marketshare Microsoft's Windows continues to be the most widely distributed desktop/laptop operating system. It's market share is more than 80%. Mac and Linux combined barely reach 10%.

What's the story here? Linux is well supported, and free.

[NineBerry]

Linux sucks.

[Sean Hayden]

[NineBerry]

But it is true.

Linux sucks for the end user. It is just not as well polished as Windows. I have tried multiple times to use some Linux desktop and always stumbled over something that just didn't work. It also doesn't look as polished as Windows. And then there are so many different variants. Try to find an answer on how to do some specific task. For Windows, this changes maybe every 5 years. For Linux, because of the many different distributions and Shells and so on, you will find a thousand different answers.

For a developer of commercial software, it is even much more of a nightmare. Try to sell a pre-compiled software that runs on Linux. No problem on Windows. Compile once and it runs on all modern Windows variants. Compile for Linux? Not possible. So, nearly all computers that need to run commercial software are lost for Linux. When people work with Windows at work in the office, why should they think about using something different at home?

[cronus]

Ease of usage - Windows is designed by complaints by a very large user base whereas Linux is designed by complaints of a small pool of dedicated geeks. No mystery. Geeks are never gonna design a Porsche either. Though Linux only needs to breakthrough one time, under one distro or another and the game will change.

[Rum]

case of first on the block. A bit like Ebay, Amazon and the like. I think once you have a critical mass of any market it takes a lot for a newcomer to try something that seems non 'mainstream'.

[Sean Hayden]

People who have used Windows for years still don't know the first thing about it. IT departments can tell you that they constantly have to hold peoples hand through every issue they're having. So there's really very little merit to the argument that people don't switch to Linux because they "know" Windows. They really don't. At least we might be able to say that any effort that would be required for them to actually learn Windows, could be used to learn Linux too.

Your techs would need to know it, and that's a valid concern.

[Sean Hayden]

case of first on the block. A bit like Ebay, Amazon and the like. I think once you have a critical mass of any market it takes a lot for a newcomer to try something that seems non 'mainstream'.

Do manufacturers work with Linux the way they do with Microsoft? Is there anything behind the scenes that hurts competitors?

[Rum]

case of first on the block. A bit like Ebay, Amazon and the like. I think once you have a critical mass of any market it takes a lot for a newcomer to try something that seems non 'mainstream'.

Do manufacturers work with Linux the way they do with Microsoft? Is there anything behind the scenes that hurts competitors?

Not that I am aware of. Here if you look at the computer mags on sale (there are lots), there are always one or two dedicated to one variant or another of Linux - and I have noticed two or three distros. I bought a mag a few months ago which claimed to help you install and get going with that particular version. I read some of the articles and just things like getting a printer to work with it was like having to enter DOS code (I'm old enough to have had to do a bit of that way back). Unless I was willing to enter the land of geek for its own sake, which I wasn't, it looked like too steep a learning curve to bother with.

[JimC]

Apple owns my soul...

[Rum]

Apple owns my soul...

Trouble is you pay the devil, not the other way around!

[PsychoSerenity]

Clearly computer operating systems are a natural monopoly and the source code should be acquired by compulsory purchase, put into the public domain and further development should be a global government funded industry.

[Brian Peacock]

... therefore Linux.

[Svartalf]

Linux sucks.

Let's say that once you've gotten used to user friendly systems like apple and window$, the more technical approach to linux, as well as the change of habits lack appeal

[pErvinalia]

It does, though. Shit never works and requires ridiculous levels of command line skill to fix (if a fix is possible at all). Top shelf software is also limited.

What MS have done is create a system that's easy to use, and only requires specialist tools or the command line for very specific and rare tasks. I love this Apple Macbook that I've been using for the last year, but it's still not as straight forward to use as windows. One of the most obvious differences between Mac/Linux and Windows is removing programs. It's basically one click on Windows. On Mac/Linux you've got to manually go and hunt down all the files and delete them. How ridiculous.