Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/

On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 10:45:24 AM UTC+5:30, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
I do not know where you get the 3% number from. As part of my work, I have to travel a lot, and I
know that Linux has been embraced widely in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America. In India
for example hardly any brand name desktop computers are sold. Most desktop machines(in offices,
commercial organizations, schools etc.,) are hand assembled from readily available Taiwanese
motherboards, intel|AMD processors, Seagate|Western Digital harddrives etc., As Linux is free
and now extremely easy to download and install, people do not bother paying Microsoft for a
OS license. I personally know a guy who at one time used to work at one of the Indian IT
companies, but for the last decade has gone solo. Everyday, Sunday, Monday .... it does not matter,
he is out configuring new computers or upgrading some old computers and so on.
With Chinese hackers hacking into military computers in Guam, and Microsoft admitting that
its cloud was hacked, I think users here should steadily move over to Linux..

On 7/13/2023 8:17 AM, amal banerjee wrote:
> With Chinese hackers hacking into military computers in Guam, and Microsoft admitting that
> its cloud was hacked, I think users here should steadily move over to Linux.

That's a /non sequitur/. The vectors that can be exploited to attack ANY given
system are myriad in number. Many involving "social engineering" (often
the weakest point of any system and one that technology can't really "fix").

"Why do you rob banks?"
"Because that's where the money is!"
-- falsely attributed to Willie Sutton

Let the "military" run linux and those same hackers will be breaking into
those same systems. They are ripe targets and more accessible than systems
located elsewhere (in physical space or cyber space).

[Do you think the Chinese military's systems have NOT been hacked?]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2023 05:15:16 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

>Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/

It's ironic that the world's biggest software company writes such bad
code.

On 7/13/2023 8:49 AM, Don Y wrote:
> Let the "military" run linux and those same hackers will be breaking into
> those same systems.  They are ripe targets and more accessible than systems
> located elsewhere (in physical space or cyber space).

Remember, you don't "run linux"; rather, you run a *distro* that uses
linux as its kernel. (unlike the *BSDs where the OS *is* the distro)

When you "run windows" you are running that entire suite of
applications that is distributed WITH windows. There are limits
to how much you can pare down a windows installation; linux can
be pared down to a subset of the kernel plus your *own* userland
(eschewing all of the FOSS userland tools out there).

Most (all?) linux distros run coreutils -- ever used rm(1), cat(1), ls(1),
cp(1), chmod(1), mv(1), date(1), etc.? Yet:

"KLEE finds important errors in heavily-tested code. It
found ten fatal errors in COREUTILS (including three
that had escaped detection for 15 years), which account
for more crashing bugs than were reported in
2006, 2007 and 2008 combined. It further found 24
bugs in BUSYBOX, 21 bugs in MINIX, and a security
vulnerability in HISTAR– a total of 56 serious bugs."

[Note that BusyBox is the heart of many embedded products]

that doesn't speak well of the hundreds (thousands?) of eyes that
examined those sources over those 15 years! Yet, folks naively
think that because it's open and more available to inspection,
it must, magically, be less buggy -- NOT!

Part of the problem with all of these offerings (open and
closed source) is they take the kitchen-sink approach to the
problem space. And, the more they try to do, the more bugs
(and exploits) they are likely to bring along to the party.

[And, if you are dealing with unsophisticated users -- windows
OR linux -- then you've already opened the door to abuses that
you've likely not imagined in your design (how many idiots use
HTML mail?)]

On 13/07/2023 07:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
> On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 3:15:24 PM UTC+10, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
>
> I've got Linux on my desk-top, as well as Windows. I boot it up very occasionally when I run into problems that would cost money to solve on Windows.
>
> Since KiCad came out with a version that runs under Windows, I've been less interested in Linux.
>

That is almost the exact opposite of my position; I run Linux for almost
everything and only use Windows for one or two tasks, most notably LT
Spice, and even then often inside virtualbox!

piglet

On 7/13/2023 9:51 AM, piglet wrote:
> That is almost the exact opposite of my position; I run Linux for almost
> everything and only use Windows for one or two tasks, most notably LT Spice,
> and even then often inside virtualbox!

I guess that would depend on what "everything" includes. I've not
seen a FOSS product for which I would abandon FrameMaker, AutoCAD,
Mathematica, MatLab, Pinnacle, KONTAKT, etc. Anything that even tries
to address these applications in the FOSS world is usually amusingly
crippled.

And, I've been *productive* with these for YEARS -- not having to
wait around for the FOSS world to catch up, apologizing for their
shortcomings...

OTOH, I write/debug all of my code under NetBSD (exporting it to Windows
to be documented) and most "special utilities" (because I dislike
Windows-based software development tools). And, my RDBMSs are hosted
under PostgreSQL (but I interact with them using Windows-based tools)

erichpwagner wrote:

<snip>

> That is almost the exact opposite of my position; I run Linux for almost
> everything and only use Windows for one or two tasks, most notably LT
> Spice, and even then often inside virtualbox!

BSD hosts all of my Apps: octave, ngspice, kicad, pulseview, qsstv ...

Danke,

--
Don, KB7RPU, https://www.qsl.net/kb7rpu
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Jul 2023 08:17:47 -0700 (PDT)) it happened amal
banerjee <dakupoto@gmail.com> wrote in
<997b2cfc-b5f1-4047-9c95-80cbd23aca12n@googlegroups.com>:

>On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 10:45:24 AM UTC+5:30, Jan Panteltje w=
>rote:
>> Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-globa=
>l-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
>I do not know where you get the 3% number from. As part of my work, I have =
>to travel a lot, and I
>know that Linux has been embraced widely in South East Asia, Africa and Lat=
>in America. In India
>for example hardly any brand name desktop computers are sold. Most desktop =
>machines(in offices,
>commercial organizations, schools etc.,) are hand assembled from readily av=
>ailable Taiwanese
>motherboards, intel|AMD processors, Seagate|Western Digital harddrives etc.=
>, As Linux is free
>and now extremely easy to download and install, people do not bother paying=
> Microsoft for a
>OS license. I personally know a guy who at one time used to work at one of =
>the Indian IT
>companies, but for the last decade has gone solo. Everyday, Sunday, Monday =
>... it does not matter,
>he is out configuring new computers or upgrading some old computers and so=
> on.
>With Chinese hackers hacking into military computers in Guam, and Microsoft=
> admitting that
>its cloud was hacked, I think users here should steadily move over to Linux=
>.

Yes I agree, have been using Linux since 1998 when SLS Liux came with a CD that came with a computer magazine.
I tried win Xp or something, it came with the new laptop I bought,
but replaced it immediately with Ubuntu Linux.
On top of that: Linux is in everything you can think of,
my Samsung TV, my Linksys WiFi access points, more of that sort of stuff.
I have read Linux is even used in space.

All my Raspberry Pies (now 5) run a version of Linux...
Even my old Asus EE PC 701 laptop came with and runs Linux..
still works after all those years
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC
from 2007, now still working after 16 years!
I am posting this with NewsFleX running on a Raspbery Pi4 8GB running Linux
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:01:29 -0700) it happened Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote in <u8palh$3mre8$2@dont-email.me>:

>On 7/13/2023 9:51 AM, piglet wrote:
>> That is almost the exact opposite of my position; I run Linux for almost
>> everything and only use Windows for one or two tasks, most notably LT Spice,
>> and even then often inside virtualbox!
>
>I guess that would depend on what "everything" includes. I've not
>seen a FOSS product for which I would abandon FrameMaker, AutoCAD,
>Mathematica, MatLab, Pinnacle, KONTAKT, etc. Anything that even tries
>to address these applications in the FOSS world is usually amusingly
>crippled.

No idea, my raspberry pi distro came with a free mathematica,
https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/
else just write your own,. writen so much stuff,
started with this newsreader when there was no Free-aAent for linux in 1998.
etc etc

On Thursday, 13 July 2023 at 16:17:53 UTC+1, amal banerjee wrote:
> On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 10:45:24 AM UTC+5:30, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
> > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
> I do not know where you get the 3% number from. As part of my work, I have to travel a lot, and I
> know that Linux has been embraced widely in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America. In India
> for example hardly any brand name desktop computers are sold. Most desktop machines(in offices,
> commercial organizations, schools etc.,) are hand assembled from readily available Taiwanese
> motherboards, intel|AMD processors, Seagate|Western Digital harddrives etc., As Linux is free
> and now extremely easy to download and install, people do not bother paying Microsoft for a
> OS license. I personally know a guy who at one time used to work at one of the Indian IT
> companies, but for the last decade has gone solo. Everyday, Sunday, Monday ... it does not matter,
> he is out configuring new computers or upgrading some old computers and so on.
> With Chinese hackers hacking into military computers in Guam, and Microsoft admitting that
> its cloud was hacked, I think users here should steadily move over to Linux.

I think most users should have gone linux long ago.

On Monday, 17 July 2023 at 00:31:53 UTC+2, Tabby wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 July 2023 at 16:17:53 UTC+1, amal banerjee wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 10:45:24 AM UTC+5:30, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > > Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
> > > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
> > I do not know where you get the 3% number from. As part of my work, I have to travel a lot, and I
> > know that Linux has been embraced widely in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America. In India
> > for example hardly any brand name desktop computers are sold. Most desktop machines(in offices,
> > commercial organizations, schools etc.,) are hand assembled from readily available Taiwanese
> > motherboards, intel|AMD processors, Seagate|Western Digital harddrives etc., As Linux is free
> > and now extremely easy to download and install, people do not bother paying Microsoft for a
> > OS license. I personally know a guy who at one time used to work at one of the Indian IT
> > companies, but for the last decade has gone solo. Everyday, Sunday, Monday ... it does not matter,
> > he is out configuring new computers or upgrading some old computers and so on.
> > With Chinese hackers hacking into military computers in Guam, and Microsoft admitting that
> > its cloud was hacked, I think users here should steadily move over to Linux.
> I think most users should have gone linux long ago.

Interest in Linux is generally down on the Internet./

Linux forums, discussing groups turned into low traffic

>

Yet one more #veryStupidByLowIQaa post.

On 7/13/23 9:51 AM, piglet wrote:
> On 13/07/2023 07:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 3:15:24 PM UTC+10, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>> Linux could be 3% of global desktops. What happened to Windows?
>>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/report-linux-desktops-hit-3-global-market-share-but-are-declining-in-us/
>>>
>>
>> I've got Linux on my desk-top, as well as Windows. I boot it up very
>> occasionally when I run into problems that would cost money to solve
>> on Windows.
>>
>> Since KiCad came out with a version that runs under Windows, I've been
>> less interested in Linux.
>>
>
> That is almost the exact opposite of my position; I run Linux for almost
> everything and only use Windows for one or two tasks, most notably LT
> Spice, and even then often inside virtualbox!
>

LTSpice runs quite nicely with WINE, no need to fire up a VM.

Where Linux has serious problems is running stuff that needs good
realtime USB behavior. For example, it cannot run my Signalhound
analyzers, neither via WINE nor VM. Only Windows can run those. Audio is
iffy as well in Linux. Maybe because of the jumble of ALSA, Pulse Audio
and whatnot.

Other than that I really like Linux. Took the plunge a few years ago
when Windows 7 was stomped into the ground by MS.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/