Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90% (venturebeat.com) 383
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat's new article about desktop operating systems: Windows 7 is still the king, but it no longer holds the majority. Nine months after Windows 10's release, Windows 7 has finally fallen below 50 percent market share and Windows XP has dropped into single digits. While this is good news for Microsoft, April was actually a poor month for Windows overall, which for the first time owned less than 90 percent of the market, according to the latest figures from Net Applications.
Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Insightful)
linux on the desktop is imminent
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Informative)
A few months ago, I was doing some work on the PC when my sister-in-law was visiting, and she happened to walk past and glance at my screen. Noticing it looked quite different to what she was used to, she asked me about it and I gave her a quick run-down of the OS (Linux Mint). When she went home, she asked me to help her install it over the phone, and now she uses it as her daily OS. Her partner's starting to show interest too, apparently.
I'm hoping Linux snowballs. Free software (and I mean both definitions of free) can really only be beaten by quality, and I think Linux is rapidly bridging that quality gap.
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Informative)
I've installed Linux on my sister's aging laptop, as a replacement for the XP she had before. I'd warned her multiple times that XP was going EOL and that she should jump to an alternative, and after some time of nagging she agreed that I can put Ubuntu on her Laptop. Unfortunately the WiFi driver didn't work and the new shiny (and expensive!) printer she bought a few weeks earlier didn't have any Linux driver support at all, so she wasn't very happy with it.
Recently she bought herself a new laptop, she didn't want me to replace the pre-installed Windows.
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It was very old hardware, and the WiFi chip was itself very old. It worked in principle, it was just a bit buggy from times to times.
About the printer, I can't recall the brand anymore. I just know that it was network capable and had cloud integration (as well as an app for the smartphone so that you can make the printer print stuff from the smartphone).
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Ugh, network capable printers are such a stupid gimmick! They double the price for them just because they put in a shitty ARM chip running some shitty embedded OS like VxWorks and a wifi card. What a ripoff.
But they also should definitely work with Linux, and I have to imagine it was user error on your part. Windows has a standard network printing interface through SMB, and every network printer I've run into supports sharing itself with Windows via that protocol. Linux, through CUPS and Samba, support
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? My HP Laserjet has a rj45 which makes it 'network capable' it sit's on the cabinet, plugged into the fibre-modem which makes it wireless!!
Network capable is cool if done right, wireless costs next to nothing these days so why not have it.
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:2)
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Informative)
I do find oddball problems in Linux, but I've been able to solve nearly all of them. One was with a so-called "WinPrinter" that relied on stuff within Windows to initialize it --- but I did find a Linux substitute and got it to work.
I had one problem with a USB wifi adapter. It was really odd in that it had worked for the longest time but then a kernel update killed it. I could have regressed my kernel to get it to work again (or done some patching) but I hardly ever used it and just let it go.
Yes, I admit using these devices would have been easier on Windows. But I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 99+% of everything I've tried works with Linux without extra hassle.
Above, someone commented that Linux was never intended to be mainstream. I interpreted that as a criticism, but actually it isn't. Linux has a certain audience. I don't see anything wrong with that. But my wife uses Linux and if she can, anyone can ... with the caveat that someone else (me, in her case) sets it up and supports it.
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I just put together a new system a few months ago, and set it up to dual boot. I have many more problems with Windows, than Linux. Heck, half the time Windows doesn't recognize my USB mouse. Seriously. (Rebooting usually fixes it, but why should I have to do that?)
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:2)
Whose fault it is is irrelevant. People want their computers to work and if they don't they're not going to use that software. People have been saying this for as long as I can remember but there's been no attempt to deal with it.
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, I gave a Fedora CD to the windows guy at work that manages the desktops. He is always saying how easy it is to install Windows. He grabbed an engineering workstations with a 6 core processor, 128g of ram, and high end graphics card. Put the CD in, it asked him 4 or 5 questions and installed. The whole process took less than 20 min and everything worked including the 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro.
He was in shock and said "That would have taken me 4 or 5 hours with windows!"
He then grabbed one of the older Dell laptops they give out to the office staff and put it in there. It installed in 20 min and recognized everything including the WiFi card. He admitted that he grabbed that laptop because it is a pain to get windows to work on it and was amazed that linux just installed, came up and worked as expected.
So, He was not a Linux Zealot, he was the windows desktop guy. I did nothing but watch, and he did everything.
Linux has come a ling ways in the last 10 years, I have been surprised as just how easy it is to install. You no longer have to be a computer wiz to install it.
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I assume the Fedora installer includes the 'non free' driver and firmware bits that Debian excludes because 'non free'.
The few hardware issues I have had with Debian installs have been resolved with just a quick web search and a little fiddling round with extra files.
As for Ubuntu, I thought they have a driver manager that does a reasonably good job, or was that just for the GPU drivers?
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On Windows 7, if I plug in a USB stick, keyboard or mouse, I see a popup saying "installing driver"... And I go "WTF are you doing, that thing is class compliant, use the built in driver you moronic operating system".
If I plug the same thing in a Linux machine, it will use the USB class driver.
Or did you mean "the only drivers that need to be installed manually".
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Ok, I gave a Fedora CD to the windows guy at work that manages the desktops. He is always saying how easy it is to install Windows. He grabbed an engineering workstations with a 6 core processor, 128g of ram, and high end graphics card. Put the CD in, it asked him 4 or 5 questions and installed. The whole process took less than 20 min and everything worked including the 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro.
He was in shock and said "That would have taken me 4 or 5 hours with windows!"
He then grabbed one of the older Dell laptops they give out to the office staff and put it in there. It installed in 20 min and recognized everything including the WiFi card. He admitted that he grabbed that laptop because it is a pain to get windows to work on it and was amazed that linux just installed, came up and worked as expected.
So, He was not a Linux Zealot, he was the windows desktop guy. I did nothing but watch, and he did everything.
Linux has come a ling ways in the last 10 years, I have been surprised as just how easy it is to install. You no longer have to be a computer wiz to install it.
And yet I can't install Fedora nor any Ubuntu (I've tried going back to 12) on a Sony Vaio laptop that works fine with Windows. It goes into thermal shutdown during install. Debian 8 installs but fucks up the USB camera.
Passing special parameters at boot for the installer does not count.
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Try running windows 10 on some of those vaios.. good luck.
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Another thing, normal people do not install windows themselves anyway, most of the time they get a friend, same as you would with a linux install (only the bar has been moved to a more accessible point since license costs do not impede experimentation).
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From the table, Linux is at 1.56%. So there is still room for growth :)
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"linux on the desktop is imminent"
Except for the fragmentation problem, the slowness of uptake is not Linux' fault. It tends to get installed on elderly PCs that "won't run Windows anymore." Small wonder that a machine so old that only XP supports all the hardware finds a lot of its hardware features unsupported by Linux either. So the geezer Linux system gets used as a file server or as an experimental machine.
What Linux adoption needs is more new PCs that come with a good Linux distribution, like Mint.
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Insightful)
linux on the desktop is imminent
I've been with Linux since 1992. No kidding.
What do I use on my desktop at home and work? Windows 10.
Linux is great for servers, especially with virtualization; each VM does one thing and does it well. Theres very little complexity to deal with. The desktop is a whole different thing. There is massive complexity and variation.
Way more software gets installed on the desktop than on a server. Way more hardware gets connected to a desktop. The interactions are incredibly complex.
I had Debian 8 with a USB camera. The camera keeps disappearing. It doesn't with Windows.
I had Ubuntu 16 with VMWare workstation. One reboot, no kernel upgrade, VMWare refuses to start. Never had this problem with Windows.
Problems like this are resolvable, you CAN use Linux on the desktop. But the amount of work you have to put in to troubleshoot things like this overwhelms the experience. I don't have time for this at home nor at work. I stick with what works without me having to do a bunch of extra hours.
The value that gets added by a proprietary OS is immense, make no mistake. And the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora really aren't in the same category as Windows or OSX
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To each his own. I have six computers running Linux on the desktop and maintain three more, plus an RPi, soon to be multiple RPis. It's been quite a while since I've had any serious issues.
It was this one actually: the Cloudbook from 2008 won't suspend to RAM correctly, so I have to use disk, and the graphics card doesn't work except in VESA mode. I actually bought the damn thing with Linux pre-installed but then replaced their crappy Ubuntu derivative with Slackware and then everything broke and the chi
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linux on the desktop is imminent
I'm assuming that was sarcasm, so little to go on... :)
If anything gained, it was Mac usershare, which makes no sense, since Apple isn't selling tons of Macs.
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I think you mean systemd on the desktop is imminent.
It's not going to stop until it /is/ linux.
Yes, and no... (Score:3)
The big question will be whether or not it takes the desktop while there is still a desktop to take...
Not an issue from my point of view. I abandoned Windows somewhere back there around the 3.2 to whatever transition. At this point Steam is gradually making even the thorny games issue moot, although it is still not the case that all games run on linux too (sadly) and there are still lots of games that don't run on steam (and which then require superpowers to get to run on linux).
The two things that still
Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are more or less happy with XP you will be ecstatic with Windows 7. But what do you do after Windows 7? Linux, obviously.
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Re:Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I did that. In fact, I kept Linux installed on a second partition for a dozen+ years. When asked (and you did not) I recommend against that dual boot thing. I dare say that, with more than a dozen years and as prolific as I write, I've examined this a lot. It is my experience that most people who do the dual booting thing do not actually convert and remain with Linux for any significant length of time. Which is okay, I'm not one to tell someone what OS to use. On the other hand, if you're interested in converting to the dark side, I've noticed most people do better at it when they go all gung-ho.
To give a bit of history... I came from Unix (more or less). Linux came out and I dicked around with it but I didn't really play with Linux until 1998 or so? It was about the time where I was comfortable with Windows at home and on some of the machines at the office. Everything else was usually from Sun. :) SunOS and Solaris were good to me and the hardware was fantastic but I'm trying to not digress too much.
Still, I liked the idea of Linux. I kept it installed on nearly every computer that I owned that had space. I preferred to put it on a second drive so often would buy (and still do) larger laptops for the express purpose of having a second drive bay. Yet, I didn't boot into it except to update it and try new things in it. Once in a while, I'd use if exclusively for a few months. Sometimes? I'd only use it for a day. Maybe even less - just long enough to break something and not feel like fixing it. Stuff like that.
During this time, with Linux installed on a 2nd drive or partition, I actually was awarded the MS MVP for more than a half-dozen years and in a variety of categories. I still had, even then, every intention to move to Linux. No... I didn't... I'd find something that looked interesting and I'd boot up a second machine or reboot the one I was on and boot to Linux. I'd get frustrated or bored and I'd just go back to Windows on the next boot. More often than not, I'd have broken something (which is actually how I learn) and then I'd just do a re-install or try a new distro and repeat the process - over a period of months, then years, then over a decade.
Then, in a fit of frustration, I realized what I had to do. How many files do you have stored that are cryptically named "setup.exe" or "install.zip?" How many copies of CCleaner.exe do you have? Do you even know what they are any more?
I was frustrated because I'm aging and, I swear, I can feel my brain plasticize. I wasn't learning anything new with Windows. Yes, it feels nice to have been recognized as an MVP and all that but that's not nearly as rewarding as it is to actually figure out something new and to learn something different. It's not as rewarding to know a bunch about the registry. What is rewarding is to figure out learning the ins-and-outs of something new. What is rewarding is finding new ways to approach problems and new ways to solve them. I was not learning anything new about Windows.
So, I guess you can say that I've used Linux for years but I've been a Linux user for only... Hmm... Just a couple or years now. I use Linux exclusively and I've gotta be going on a couple of years at it now. I do have a Windows phone, I guess that's not Linux but Android's not very much like a desktop Linux either. (I'm eagerly awaiting some reports on the new Ubuntu phone. I did pre-order a tablet. I should check on that.) I have pretty much used Linux exclusively on my home servers for much longer than that - but not on the desktop. It's not like I was a n00b coming into it or anything - but, still, there is much to learn even now.
Just delete everything. Save any personal documents. Wipe your drives. Burn all your Windows installs to the ground. Delete all those installers that you'll never need again. Then, no matter what, don't look back. Don't even install Windows in a VM. Screw it... Unless you have a compelling need, don't do it. That is, if you want to actually switch and stay switched. I h
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If you are more or less happy with XP you will be ecstatic with Windows 7. But what do you do after Windows 7? Linux, obviously.
I heard the same cries back in 2011 compared Windows 7 to the anti christ. Ewww IT LOOKS LIKE VISTA THEREFORE IT IS VISTA OMG. In XP in 2001 OMG It is FISHER PRICE. DRM. ACTIVATION HELL NO ... Windows 98 FOR LIFE WILL GO TO LINUX by 2004.
Funny it is always the last version of WIndows that was the usable one yet time keeps marching on.
I am not a fanboy. Just live in the real world in the IT field where if I do not know the latest and greatest OS people will assume I am incompetent.
Drinkypoo if you walked in
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Funny it is always the last version of WIndows that was the usable one yet time keeps marching on.
I've said it before, yes. But Microsoft has never turned their OS into a mandatory spying platform before. This time is fundamentally different. I absolutely will not go to Windows 10, and there is absolutely no benefit to going to Windows 8.
I am not a fanboy. Just live in the real world in the IT field where if I do not know the latest and greatest OS people will assume I am incompetent.
I no longer have any interest in working for an IT shop that uses Windows. If that means I'm shoveling shit for a living, so be it. I found out working with Windows doesn't make me happy.
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Plus, under XP, I escape the constant nagging / threats to upgrade to Windows 10. We are the Forgotten Ones that Microsoft has (thankfully) left behind.
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Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing you couldn't get in shortcuts is the "run" box, and that requires keystrokes anyway, so just close your eyes, hit the windows key, and type what you want. You don't have to "see" metro, even if you have to use it to run a command. With "pin to taskbar" in Win10, you put your start menu on the taskbar. It's impossible to avoid Metro in 10, but you don't have to spend more than 2-10 seconds there to get anything done. type it out, and it's faster than finding it in a list. The only time it's "intrusive" is when you are on a tablet with touch, but no keyboard, in which case, it's easier to use than the start menu.
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Informative)
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You can't complain for what you get for free, some work is fine. But if you pay for something, you expect it to be working as you want it.
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Install distro from pen drive - 15 Mins.......
update && upgrade (Only reboot once
launch "additional drivers", select graphics drivers (proprietary nvidia for me) - 10 Mins (Depends on internet connection)
Any further software that needs to be installed will be the same with any other OS.
Already has tons of software installed, ready to go.
Any other software can be installed using command line (my favorite) or using one of the various included "app stores" (Ubuntu Software Center for example)
Very rarely do you need to spend more than an hour to get a modern distro up and running.
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After all, how I want my desktop to be is quite unlikely to be what you would want yours to be. Be it Windows, Apple, LINUX or BSD. Customization of the desktop is a must, regardless of O/S.
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Because there isn't an operating system that has ever existed that I was completely content with out of the box. I've customised Windows, DOS, BSD, Linux, BeOS and OS/2. The fact that Windows 8.x allowed software to override the start screen and that many pieces of software were available to do just that on day one of Windows 8 meant that it was never a problem.
With Windows 7 I remember having to install some third party software just to get proper multi-display support for the taskbar and a third party cop
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Linus originally wrote the Linux kernel for desktop use. It is market leader in the server world, having a market share of 100% in supercomputers, and as part of the android operating system it is market leader on the smartphone market as well.
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at what Amazon is doing with AWS as an example and you will see there's real truth in that statement.
Back in 95 / 97 Windows was trying to claim that NT was 'The backbone of the Internet' when the Internet had been around some 30 years prior to Windows ever getting a TCP/IP stack.
Just because your view of the Internet has been through a windows machine with the popularity of the world wide web, doesn't mean all these Internet services are provided by Windows machines, which very bluntly, suck terribly at serving web pages much less anything else.
I have been testing Korora Linux as an alternative to Windows 10. Whether it's evil or not I have absolutely no trust in Microsoft whatsoever. It is what it is.
Re: Yeey, less than 90% to go (Score:5, Informative)
It is market leader in the server world, having a market share of 100% in supercomputers,
100%??? I call bullshit. it has 100% of the top 10 and the vast majority of the top 500 but Linux most definitely does NOT have 100% marketshare in supercomputers.
OP pretty much got it right, it's actually 99%. Check for yourself. [top500.org]
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I think it's pathetic that with the "free" "upgrade" and all of the insidious, sneaky and aggressive ways that Microsoft has been trying to force Windows 10 on to people that it's still barely beating out outdated, shitty Windows XP.
Even more pathetic is that the free Linux OS is only barely beating out the outdated and shitty Windows 3.1! Seriously, 0.4% are using 3.1.
I have a relative who still uses Windows 3.1 (despite me offering free PCs), but she doesn't connect to the net with such an old device and so would not be counted in those numbers. Mind you, it is probably incredibly secure because nobody would know how to attack such old software, and even if they did nobody would bother making the effort.
So what's replacing it? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's that guy who made 3.11 run on his Apple Watch.
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And why is Windows 3.11 seeing such an uptick in use?
Because the data is based on website visits, and Win3.x users have only just figured out getting on-line. I never did.
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Install something like Trumpet WinSock and Netscape 2. Pretty easy really. I never had to deal with it on my machines because I had real machines and better fully 32-bit operating systems at the time. Some of my friends weren't so lucky.
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For whatever reason,
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There might have been a change in their methodology last month. Apart from the Windows 3.11 jump from 0.00% to 0.40% (sic - they use two decimal places) going from March to April there is also a jump to 0.03% for Win 2000 when it was steady for many months at 0.01% and Linux had quite a significant sudden drop in the same month when its changes were usually smaller. An emulation project might have explained Windows 3.11 (although archive.org for example has been up way before April), but which popular emul
You've got it all wrong (Score:2)
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And why is Windows 3.11 seeing such an uptick in use?
Win3.x will have a user base probably ten times as much as that web-based survey, because most of its users will never use the internet (as I joked in another comment). It was unusual to connect to the internet in Win3.x days, only geeks did it, and even they were more likely to connect to a BBS. Most people only ever used their PCs for writing letters, keeping their finances, and playing Solitaire.
There are old folk around today still with those PCs using them the same way - they (the PCs I mean) wer
Re:So what's replacing it? (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 3.x didn't have a start menu. If you're too young to remember, don't talk out of your ass.
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I thought I could remember seeing it back on 3.11 I tried to double check using google image search "start 3.11" but I guess those must be screenshots of mods or themes.
Sorry about that.
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3.x was rather crippled. You had a "desktop" but on it were "program groups" with shortcuts to applications. To browse the filesystem you had to open File Manager which was lame compared to the filesystem browser in built into the desktop on GEM or MacOS. It was also rather crashy, didn't support 32-bit apps without extensions (even long after 32-bit CPU's were common), and only supported "cooperative" multitasking. The competition was lightyears ahead.
3.x wasn't a real OS, it was basically a DOS shell
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Some time after windows 95 was released.
See: http://toastytech.com/guis/cal... [toastytech.com]
Again sorry my mistake it has been a very long time since ive seen a 3.x system running.
Windows 3.11 did not include a start menu. The other comments are correct that it was not introduced until windows 95.
meh (Score:2)
All it would take is for Win7 to have a native usb3 driver supported at the same level as Win8.1 and Win10 usb3 drivers and Win7 would be the operating system of choice for the next 15 years. Both Win8.1 and Win10 work too hard to break the boundary between PC as a personal computer and PC as a cloud terminal. Win7 still has more functionality, as a desktop operating system, than Win8.1 and Win10.
The flat-out refusal to have kernel level generic usb3 driver means that all hypervisors running on Win7 must
Re:meh (Score:5, Interesting)
The flat-out refusal to have kernel level generic usb3 driver means that all hypervisors running on Win7 must either have their own full USB3 implementation or be limited to USB2. This is just an attempt to get people to upgrade from Win7
The number of people looking at Windows 7 USB3 support as a hypervisor host is only slightly more people than "just you".
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The number of people looking at Windows 7 USB3 support as a hypervisor host is only slightly more people than "just you".
The number of people who use a desktop PC (not a laptop, but an actual desktop) and don't use at least some form of hypervisor (even if it's just a VMWare player) is shrinking with every generation of chips getting released. The more cores the machines have, the less likely people are to do everything in the context of one running desktop instead of going for different desktops in order to create an isolated environment for various applications. Containers are still much harder to set up than just downloa
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Even if I accepted the premise that most of the desktop users didn't know about VM'
Most desktops are still being used by vanilla office workers. I work with a retail chain... 600+ desktops... 3-5 in every location, they all just run the point of sale app and office. Separately I work with a multitude of medical practices... just the practice management software, accounting, etc. Most desktop users still call the desktop the 'hard disk' and need help finding out what version of windows they are actually running.
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Most desktop users still call the desktop the 'hard disk'.
Do they?
:-
I believe desktop users fall into four categories
Office workers
Power users/developers
Power Gamers [my term fro them, to exclude the Flappy Bird crowd]
Old timers who will use their XP desktop PC until it fails
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Office workers - still form the bulk of PC desktop users IMO
Power users - Only a significant fraction of which would use a hypervisor; and only a minor fraction would care about USB3 support passed through to the guest. (which is the context here -- because even I use hypervisors left and right, and USB3 isn't even on my radar as something i worry about.)
Power Gamers - Not going to be running hypervisors much.
old timers -- Not going to be running hypervisors ever.
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There are usb3 drivers for win7. Also you're assuming all the people running win7 have usb3 hardware.
You are making 2 easily refutable arguments in 2 sentences. If you want to have any further discussion on the subject, please, let me know that you see the counterarguments to the arguments you made. Please, show that you can refute the two assertions you made there all by yourself. Then we can have a real discussion.
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>Win7 still has more functionality, as a desktop operating system, than Win8.1 and Win10.
How so?
the invasive spying of windows 10 (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny thing is. (Score:2)
I just got my stepfather's old PC up and running to get some pictures and copies of some of the books he wrote. It is running XP. When I am done I will put Linux on it and use it as my garage computer.
So I guess I am running an XP machine right now.
I think the Mac is replacing it in many cases .... (Score:4, Interesting)
The stats on hardware sales for the last couple years kept indicating slumps in most Windows PC maker's sales, with Apple the only hardware manufacturer still reporting good sales figures.
At some point, if more people keep buying new Macs instead of new Windows machines, we should see the OS usage stats changing for Windows too.
I don't doubt a number of people also went to Linux when they got frustrated with things about Windows 10. But statistically, I doubt it made the dent that OS X did. (One of my friends just dumped Win 10 in favor of the latest Ubuntu, but he's already angry with some issues he ran into with it. So not sure he'll keep it....)
Unfortunately, Apple seem to be its own worst enemy right now, since it's more interested in converting people to iOS on iPads than convincing them to get new Mac desktops or laptops. I guess anything's possible, but I truly think the idea that tablets will replace PCs for people is a big mistake. Think of corporate America, where people spend most of the day using a computer from a desk. Why compromise with some sort of tablet in that scenario? People want multiple, large monitors for better productivity and less eye-strain. That, in turn, requires more powerful graphics cards to push all of the pixels needed to run at those screen resolutions at a good speed. That winds up the weak spot for a tablet form-factor machine. Fast graphics cards require lots of power and give off lots of heat. They don't cram well into flat tablets.
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I find most windows users know absolutely nothing about their computers either. I had one friend bring me one to clean up and it had 4 virus checkers fighting each other. Toolbars from yahoo and a bunch of other places and excess crap bringing a quad core I5 processor to it's knees. I got it running good and gave it back and 6 weeks later it's full of shitware again. He's a farily typical windows user from what I've seen. Probably the biggest problem with windows is the manufacturers that pile loads of
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Except Macs are also designed for people with real computer knowledge as well. It's (real) Unix under the hood, the command line is there by default, emacs is there by default, etc. Granted they dumbed down the compiler and tools (hoping you get sucked into xcode), and they did dumb stuff to root, but it's more developer friendly than Windows by default (Windows assumes you're computer illiterate). There's a consistency on the Mac that you'll never see on Windows.
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Apple has been moving to end their Macintosh line of computers.
I sure hope Apple doesn't replace Mac OS X with iOS. I hate the limitations in my iPad re. importing files, managing folders, etc. Ex: I wrote a tool that created html files and supporting sound files. These files were created by AppleScript and Perl, so they had to be created on a Mac, not on an iPad. I showed the tool to an Apple employee, who taught iPad workshops in an Apple retail store. I asked him how to copy those files and folders from my Mac to the iPad, preserving the file and folder structure. H
Who is still using Windows NT? (Score:2)
The Bar Chart (Score:3, Informative)
The bar chart clarifies things. Windows down a tick. OSX up a tick. Linux flat-lined as always. Desktop Top Operating System Share Trend [netmarketshare.com]
More revealing, perhaps, are the numbers from Statcounter, which show OSX doing very well in the North American market, at 17.5%. Top 7 Desktop OSs in North America from Apr 2015 to Mar 2016 [statcounter.com]
Statcounter doesn't break out stats for Linux, which is perhaps just as well.
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The bar chart clarifies things. Windows down a tick. OSX up a tick. Linux flat-lined as always
What do you suppose is in that "8.5% Other" ?
Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90% (Score:2)
Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%
OMG... But wait, that's not what the stats actually say. In fact, several older versions are dropping as Win10 takes over. But the simple facts are, Windows is still king.
And, until software producers start building top-tier CONSUMER software for Linux, it will remail that way.
Not just GAMES, though games is a big part, but also things like native (non-Wine) PhotoShop and other common commercial tools.
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And, until software producers start building top-tier CONSUMER software for Linux, it will remail that way.
I think you're wrong. I don't think Linux will EVER be king of the hill.
But that isn't the point. It doesn't have to be king of the hill. For those of us who use it because it's free and open, because it doesn't spy on us, and because it helps us get things done, being "king of the hill" is irrelevant.
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Do you have any evidence this is actually true? I'd love it, if it was, but it seems like this would be lawsuit-worthy, and that we would have heard about it, before.
Microsoft doesn't care about windows as much (Score:5, Informative)
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Windows isn't a major segment of Microsoft's revenue anymore [computerworld.com]. Because of that, they have gotten complacent, and don't really care much anymore. Remember how things went with IE when that happened? Expect roughly the same for Windows.
They care about app developers. Remember they sell Visual Studio and notice how it is very multiplatform friendly now. Without Universal Windows Apps they lose out on mobile to Apple and Google. They want that revenue from the playstore as well which is how Apple beat Microsoft. 15 years ago I would be laughed at an oblivion at my last sentence. But, Steve Jobs won over Bill Gates with the simple store. Guess which legacy OS doesn't support it? Windows 7
Oh, with the server, yeah the cloud with Azure so they
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they lose out on mobile to Apple and Google.
Man, they've already lost out on mobile, and given up on it.
They want that revenue from the playstore as well which is how Apple beat Microsoft.
They won't complain if they get revenue from the playstore, but their money comes from small to medium sized businesses, so Office, and now, the cloud is the huge opportunity they are chasing like crazy. Read the article I linked to, it clarifies a lot about the 'new' Microsoft.
Don't care (Score:2)
Occasionally some people need to run Microsoft Office specifically. Or they need to run some software that only runs on w
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Linux is hard to configure ..[blah, blah, blah]... Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop?
Oh God, here we go again with the flamebait shills.
If you really want an answer to your question, why not use the search function here? Perhaps we should make this a FAQ.
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Its been well over a decade since those were real problems. That said, I would give you more credibility if you hadn't posted as AC. And FWIW, I've been using Linux as an everyday desktop since 1997. Yes, it actually was a bit harder back then, you had to do some reading and understanding. Nowdays, stick the disc in and reboot.
Here's a real problem with the linux desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Its been well over a decade since those were real problems. That said, I would give you more credibility if you hadn't posted as AC. And FWIW, I've been using Linux as an everyday desktop since 1997. Yes, it actually was a bit harder back then, you had to do some reading and understanding. Nowdays, stick the disc in and reboot.
The OP was about the start menu, so here's a real goddamned problem with linux.
I'm using Linux Mint, which comes with cinnamon.
You can configure the start menu, but it's clunky. To move things around you have to laboriously click on an application, click "copy", go to the destination, and click "paste". One at a time, because doesn't support multiple selections.
Then you have to go *back* to the original location, where you now have *two* copies of the application icon, and make one of them invisible. Not delete it - that will also delete the one you just put in the new location.
About 90 minutes later (*) I had the start menu categories organized in a good way, and made the things I didn't need invisible. Some things you can't make invisible ("universal access"), but I can live with the extra clutter.
The menu system editor lets you make sub-menus. I like to have a small number of choices in each menu (so that I don't have to scan long lists to find the thing I want), so I thought I would group the wine applications (there are 3 of them) into a sub-menu named wine, so that it would only take up 1 line in the menu.
A quick google shows that this feature, of not having sub-menus, is by design, it's not going to be fixed, and the system was designed in such a way that the underlying structure format has to be rewritten to support it.
So there's this feature of the menu editor for putting things in sub-menus, but it has no effect?
Gah!
This is reminiscent of the Firefox changes, where people keep saying "Oh, this is much better! DO IT OUR WAY!"
Compare to the WinXP version of menu organizing: the start menu is a directory (on the disk), and sub-menus are sub-directories. Applications are files (links to the executable), which can be moved around trivially en-masse using cut and paste.
I keep hearing linux evangelists saying "everything is a file", but not in this case. Everything is hidden, broken, designed to be used one-and-only way, and obscure.
(I'm aware of the "alacarte" application, which makes it *slightly* easier to manipulate menus, but the end result is the same. It also borked the menu system, so I had to purge and reinstall cinnamon.)
(*) After finding this out, I originally thought I'd edit the config files manually and move things around using the editor. Editing is easy, but finding out which files to edit is highly non-trivial. I found three (yes, three) separate places that *seemed* to list the top-level categories of my start menu, but test edits (change "graphics" to "grophics" and check for changes) had no effect. Also, there are a bewildering number of possible files to edit, in several locations. Some are in $HOME/.config, some are $HOME/.local, and some are in /etc/xdg.
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Agreed, Linux UI usability needs a ton of work. And every distribution is very different than all the others; which isn't necessarily bad but it does mean that the hour you spent trying to make a custom menu or icon is lost if you go to a different distribution.
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Whenever someone points out real problems with Linux, there are Linux shills calling it flamebait
The post was flamebait because it is not put in the manner of a genuine question asked in good faith, which I would be happy to answer.
However this poster makes it clear that he already has an opinion on the subject, based on the implication that he already has significant experience of both Windows and Linux. He therefore has no real need to ask the question which he does then ask as to "why Linux is a good choice". He clearly asks this just to launch an argument, which is what a flamebait is.
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Next question?
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This is a big problem with Linux. Whenever someone points out real problems with Linux, there are Linux shills calling it flamebait and attacking them. It's telling that you can't answer the question and instead dismiss it as flamebait.
This is what you said in your first post:
"Linux is hard to configure."
I don't agree. I don't have any particular problems. At least I don't have to deal with the registry. Most distros provide a control center similar to the one on Windows.
"It has terrible user interfaces."
Arguably some options aren't great (like Unity, though some people like it). But there are many choices and my Mint Mate desktop, as one example, is very easy to use and work with.
"Software like Libreoffice is far inferior to Microsoft Of
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Re:Why would anyone want Linux on the desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop? I doubt it.
I can tell you why. For me Linux Mint has been a perfect alternative to Windows.
It's free, it installed easily, everything just works, and I like not having to reboot after updating the system. All of the applications I need are available and Wine runs the few niche Windows apps I still use. I'm sure I'll find replacements for those when I get around to it but so far there's been no need.
I'm still searching for some good malware but so far I've had no luck in that department.
Re: Why would anyone want Linux on the desktop? (Score:2)
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https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince [gnome.org]
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Okular has always worked for me for filling out PDF tax forms. I don't doubt that there are some complex PDFs it fails at though.
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I used to like okular but it tends to choke on image-laden PDFs such as 40 page brochures. e.g. viewing a film festival in portrait mode as a presentation.
So unless there's something requiring specific compatibility I use Atril (the mate fork of evince), which has no problem scrolling between images.
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Because it installs flawlessly in a short period of time. All the hardware I have encountered in the last 5 years just works without even finding a driver disk, or letting it connect to the internet. Because the user interface is sane, things work and the software is powerful. Because if you want you can run it off a USB stick and you can just take your whole OS instance and move from one computer to another.
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Linux is hard to configure, well sometime yes, other no. Sharing a drive is a click away. LibreOffice has become good enough; seriously, you should try it on Windows. NVidia proprietary video driver is pretty much on par with Windows. Games, well it depends if you play them or not. Many do not care; thus the reason why they departed from Windows to tablets.
If you want solid reason for disliking Linux, read my take on it at My disastrous experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar [deragon.info].
Despite, I still