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From: Hadron on 7 May 2008 13:20
Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8(a)verizon.net> writes:

> Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>> On Wed, 7 May 2008 08:31:47 -0400, DFS wrote:
>>
>>> "I believe it will never become mainstream in it's current form."
>>> http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?search_id=1327806771&t=28030
>>
> I, personally, do not care if Linux becomes "mainstream" or not. I find it
> suits my needs much better than Microsoftware does. If you do not find this
> to be the case for your needs, use something else. Why not?
>
>> At 0.6 percent of the desktop market after 10 years and despite being free,
>> that is probably a true statement.
>
> It is difficult to measure the desktop market after 10 years, or after any
> period of time because Linux software is not always sold, and even when it
> is, it can usually be copied free to other systems. So (ignoring
> piracy),


It's only difficult if you are a complete idiot. It is easy to get some
idea of relative usage from net stats to an OS independent web site like
the BBC. They clocked Linux at under 1% of their visitors which a casual
look around would appear to verify.
From: Ezekiel on 7 May 2008 13:40

"Jean-David Beyer" <jeandavid8(a)verizon.net> wrote in message
news:xdkUj.7719$0L.7200(a)trnddc07...
> Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>> On Wed, 7 May 2008 08:31:47 -0400, DFS wrote:
>>
>>> "I believe it will never become mainstream in it's current form."
>>> http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?search_id=1327806771&t=28030
>>
> I, personally, do not care if Linux becomes "mainstream" or not. I find it
> suits my needs much better than Microsoftware does. If you do not find
> this
> to be the case for your needs, use something else. Why not?
>
>> At 0.6 percent of the desktop market after 10 years and despite being
>> free,
>> that is probably a true statement.
>
> It is difficult to measure the desktop market after 10 years, or after any
> period of time because Linux software is not always sold, and even when it
> is, it can usually be copied free to other systems. So (ignoring piracy),
> Microsoftware can be measured rather accurately, where Linux systems
> cannot.

This is all fine and well if we were talking about "sales" - but we're
talking about "usage" and many free things can be accurately measured, so
why not linux?

This thing called "statistics" has been around a while and it's proven to
work rather well. We can "measure" how many people will travel over 50 miles
during Christmas to visit relatives. We can "measure" how long the average
person brushes their teeth or how long they sleep each night or how many
glasses of water they drink each day. We can measure how often people have
sex and we can also measure how many people listen to sports-radio vs. how
many people listen to hip-hop on the radio.

If all these things can accurately be measured then why exactly is it
impossible to measure how many people use linux?



> There are probably many more Linux systems operating out here than the
> sales
> figures from Red Hat (for example) would indicate. One attempt to measure
> this is at web site http://counter.li.org/ . This site counts only the
> number of users and machines actually reported by the users, so is a
> severe
> undercount. On this page, http://counter.li.org/estimates.php , the owner
> of
> this site tries to estimate the number of Linux users and comes up with a
> figure of twenty-nine million. He explains how he arrives at this number.

Again. This is all great if you're talking about "sales" but it does nothing
to explain why you can't measure how many people use linux. Somehow it's
possible to measure how many people use Firefox (also free to download, free
to copy, free to distribute, etc) so why can Firefox be measured but no
linux?


>> Linux should give up on the desktop market, like Redhat did, and
>> concentrate on servers and embedded devices.
>>
> That is an interesting comment.
>
> Red Hat has given up _making money_ on the desktop, but it does support
> the
> Fedora project by providing servers and Internet connectivity for its
> developers. It may also allow its employees to contribute effort to
> Fedora.
>
> Red Hat does not supply any specifically desktop distributions anymore,
> but
> I run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on my main desktop (and CentOS4 on my
> other
> one). I think their long-term support for each release (7 years) is worth
> the expense. YMMV
>
> --
> .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
> /V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
> /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
> ^^-^^ 11:35:01 up 4:07, 3 users, load average: 4.55, 4.49, 4.47


** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
From: Rick on 7 May 2008 02:00
Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
> On Wed, 7 May 2008 08:31:47 -0400, DFS wrote:
>
>> "I believe it will never become mainstream in it's current form."
>> http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?search_id=1327806771&t=28030
>
> At 0.6 percent of the desktop market after 10 years and despite being free,
> that is probably a true statement.
>
> Linux should give up on the desktop market, like Redhat did, and
> concentrate on servers and embedded devices.
>
When did Red Hat stop producing its desktop distribution?

--
Rick
From: The Natural Philosopher on 7 May 2008 14:07
Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>
> Linux should give up on the desktop market, like Redhat did, and
> concentrate on servers and embedded devices.
>

? teh very structure of that sentence shows your ignorance. Linux is not
an entity, corporate or individual, that has intentionality, and
therefore cannot act as the subject of an an anthropic verb like 'should'..

Linux is an operating system.

All it 'should' do is work.

In whatever way its *designers and developers* want it to.

Since they don't make a cent from it, its pretty hard to tell *them*
what they should or should not do. And expect them to listen.
From: JEDIDIAH on 7 May 2008 14:00
On 2008-05-07, Ezekiel <a(a)b.com> wrote:
>
> "Jean-David Beyer" <jeandavid8(a)verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:xdkUj.7719$0L.7200(a)trnddc07...
>> Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>>> On Wed, 7 May 2008 08:31:47 -0400, DFS wrote:
>>>
>>>> "I believe it will never become mainstream in it's current form."
>>>> http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?search_id=1327806771&t=28030
>>>
>> I, personally, do not care if Linux becomes "mainstream" or not. I find it
>> suits my needs much better than Microsoftware does. If you do not find
>> this
>> to be the case for your needs, use something else. Why not?
>>
>>> At 0.6 percent of the desktop market after 10 years and despite being
>>> free,
>>> that is probably a true statement.
>>
>> It is difficult to measure the desktop market after 10 years, or after any
>> period of time because Linux software is not always sold, and even when it
>> is, it can usually be copied free to other systems. So (ignoring piracy),
>> Microsoftware can be measured rather accurately, where Linux systems
>> cannot.
>
> This is all fine and well if we were talking about "sales" - but we're
> talking about "usage" and many free things can be accurately measured, so
> why not linux?

...what other free things can be accurately measured?

>
> This thing called "statistics" has been around a while and it's proven to
> work rather well. We can "measure" how many people will travel over 50 miles

Spoken like someone who's never had a stats class or even opened up
a stats book.

[deletia]

--

The social cost of suing/prosecuting individuals |||
for non-commercial copyright infringement far outweighs / | \
the social value of copyright to begin with.



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