Robert Pogson

I prefer the web-stats at W3Schools.com a lot more than the other ones:

• Google’s Chrome-browser up 10 % points in the last year to 17% share – 140% growth-
• Mozilla’s FireFox down a couple % to 45.8% share – about even
• IE down 8 points to 30.7% – 22% drop
• That other OS fell from 89.3% to 87.6% in the year, down 2%
• GNU/Linux rose from 4.2% to 4.9%, up 17% year over year

There we have the story. Almost a year after releasing the great “7″ that other OS has lost a lot of ground, millions of users. “7″ has only 22% share despite being recommended by the “partners” and almost exclusively found on shelves by consumers. The monopoly could have installed “7″ on nearly 350 million PCs but missed out on 50 million or so. XP went on a lot of those but so did GNU/Linux. By those numbers GNU/Linux is now on 70 million PCs. I think GNU/Linux is much higher than that just because of language/regional barriers to the web stats.

While there are technical and legal reasons why M$ will retreat from their monopoly position on the desktop, the manner and timing of their demise is uncertain. A stock analyst has written a good piece about the economic/market forces keeping M$ afloat.

e.g.

• When desktop PCs dominated, M$ had a virtual competitor in small businesses and individuals building their own PCs from parts and installing illegal copies of M$’s stuff. Now that notebooks dominate that is more difficult. There are still relatively few notebooks produced without that other OS, mostly netbooks. Except for the netbook this is a big up-side for M$.
• That other OS is tricky to move from one PC to another so large deployments keep a few prototypes and do disc copying to install/update/repair systems. GNU/Linux loves to run on anything so this is a huge threat to M$.
• The virtual machine makes it much easier to run other OS with the stability/reliability of MacOS on Apple and the low cost of GNU/Linux.
• GNU/Linux is more than ready for the desktop.

TFA is an initial assessment of the status, not a conclusion. I tend to conclude that in the long run, M$ cannot win and the desktop will be free. M$ can do lots of holding/delaying actions and with enough spending can drag the end out for more profitable years but as the netbook showed, large hits can come quickly. One point the authour missed largely is the continuing growth of malware as an industry attacking M$. The cost of that other OS as licensing and maintenance is large enough. Fighting the malware is an even larger cost. For the time being, GNU/Linux has a free ride on malware and in the end will do better against malware. Further, while TFA may be a great analysis of existing markets, the future is huge for small cheap computers which squeezes M$ out completely. They cannot put $200 licences on $100 netbooks. When a large part of the market will use such machines, M$ will lose share. Even today, “7″ is appearing on netbooks which sell for less than the licence for “7″. That means M$ is paying OEMs to install “7″ which is not a good long-range win for them. It is a delaying tactic. The next down-turn will end that practice and they will immediately lose a good share of production.

AutoCad is considered a “must-have” application for some end-users of PCs and some give that as an example why GNU/Linux does not take larger share. In truth AutoCad is used on a rather small number of PCs in total. Not everyone is a designer/draughtsperson.

For many years AutoCad was not available on MacOS either, in spite of MacOS having a resurgence in business. That is changing as AutoDesk announced that AutoCad is coming back to MacOSS. As the same hardware runs GNU/Linux and MacOS is a UNIX-like OS it is quite possible that a release for GNU/Linux will appear sooner rather than later. That should shut up some of the trolls who insist availability of one app is the cause for GNU/Linux to have a small share on store shelves.

Globally GNU/Linux has a larger share of PCs than MacOS because Macs rarely appear in large parts of the globe. The USA/Europe regions account for only about half the world’s PCs and AutoCad, while useful, is not essential to everyone. At $4000 it is not affordable either.

Preston Gralla has a good blog entry on an insecurity report from IBM:
“It reports that Linux had more vulnerabilities than any other operating system. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the most vulnerable operating system, because Microsoft had the most serious vulnerabilities. Here’s what the report has to say about operating systems:

So if you’re a Mac or Linux user, don’t think you’re invulnerable — like Windows users, you’re not secure.”

He’s right of course. GNU/Linux is very insecure. I am very insecure walking around without a bullet-proof vest. I should be riding around in a tank but no one is shooting at me. Openness does have its disadvantages. One’s insecurities are laid bare for all to see. On the other hand they can be found and fixed sooner. With that other OS we often only find out about the vulnerabilities after malware-artists are driving trucks through them. Then M$ takes a few months to fix and test the fix before releasing the fix giving the malware-artists free reign over IT. The report mentions that M$ is number one on serious vulnerabilities, you know, the ones trucks fit.

If you are guarding Fort Knox and have a lot to lose, you should be worried about the insecurity of GNU/Linux but you definitely should not be using that other OS. GNU/Linux can be secured very well with layers of security: firewall, web filtering, USB device scanning, virtualization, backupped backups, good passwords and updates. With a few layers of security GNU/Linux becomes quite solid.

If you are just browsing the web for information, you can run from a live CD with GNU/Linux and be solid. For normal use you can do a lot just by minimizing the number of software packages you install and services running. Don’t lose sleep over the insecurities in GNU/Linux. Count the thousands of attacks that other OS gets for every one sent your way instead of counting sheep.

One of the lovely things about GNU/Linux is that it boots and keeps on booting. Compare that with that other OS that eventually becomes unbootable.

A very common boot-loader for GNU/Linux systems is GRUB. Lately, version 2 has introduced a lot of features and extended the region of the hard drive used. Therein lies a problem for “dual-booting”. Some apps or malware on that other OS have been storing stuff in the early sectors and just running that other OS clobbers GRUB2.

My advice? Don’t dual-boot. If you need to run that other OS, do so in a virtual machine so that it can clobber its virtual boot-loader and not yours. VirtualBox makes this very easy and you get the added benefit that you can run both OS simultaneously without having to re-re-reboot.

I did this on one system this year. The principal obtained a new machine with “7″. He wanted to try GNU/Linux. I set up VirtualBox to autostart with GNU/Linux booting in the virtual machine. He never used “7″ at all…

We depend on IT these days for information, employment, communication, entertainment, solutions to real problems, and daily operation of our organizations. There is no better, faster, and cheaper way to do what we do than with computers and networks. It was recently brought to our attention that malware that affects our computers and networks can wreak havoc in our daily lives. Not just conveniences but matters essential to life, what most of us value highly, can be undermined by malware. There is suspicion that part of the chain of failure that allowed a fatal flight to depart was a malware-infected PC used to transmit reliability/status information to a remote computer. The plane in question was over its limit of faults and should have been grounded for a thorough examination. Instead it took off without the flaps and slats extended. The flight was short. An on-board system intended to warn of this condition did not sound and the pilots failed to make the adjustment or abort take-off. Was malware the cause? Not completely but the layers of protection built into this complex life-support system failed in several places and one of them was affected by malware.

Neither M$ nor Linux nor any distribution of GNU/Linux is rated for the kind of reliability needed for this work but that other OS was in the loop. It failed to back up multiple human failures to save lives.

We know that that other OS, produced by M$, is not designed with reliablity and performance in mind. It is too complex. It has too many built-in dependencies among unrelated tasks. It has too many vulnerabilities. No one should depend on it to save lives. Since we may not anticipate how our IT systems may disrupt mission-critical operations if they fail, we should use the most reliable software we can. For now that would be various UNIX operating systems such as AIX, FreeBSD or GNU/Linux. They are all modular so that the debugging and fixing tasks are much simpler that with that other OS. Further, because Free Software like FreeBSD and GNU/Linux are open-source, one can go in and examine the code and tinker with it to improve it. These changes are shared with other users, compounding the efforts of the whole world. A single corporation cannot match that.

My conclusion is simple. Use GNU/Linux. It is much more likely to save your life or the health of your organization when a crisis arises.

M$ builds gliders with the same skill, hype, and complexity with which they build operating systems. Here is the result. My conclusion? It is wrong to assume one of the wealthiest corporations in the world can do anything right. They seem to always release beta-software. Have you noticed? Diversity is good.

Of course M$ is a huge corporation with turnover of staff, marketing campaigns and aggressive salesmen so it changes as time goes on and in response to changes in the economy but, for a long time M$ has been intolerant of competition. They were never content to coexist but needed to eliminate competition going to great ends to do so. Their huge revenue streams pays for lots of strategies to eliminate competition far beyond what is needed or possible in companies competing properly in the market. In particular they have gone to great lengths to prevent GNU/Linux competing on the desktop through FUD, funding SCOG, patent-threats, etc.

Too much water has passed under that bridge for me to believe there is much possibility for M$ to change in its relationship with GNU/Linux. They may tolerate GNU/Linux because almost all their customers use GNU/Linux but they still would not let GNU/Linux enjoy an opportunity on netbooks, notebooks or desktops. They called GNU/Linux a cancer, derided the great programmers who created the Free Software, threatened patent-suits and pressured many to pay licence fees for GNU/Linux and paid OEMs not to install GNU/Linux. Then retailers had no stock and consumers could not choose GNU/Linux. They pressure those few who do sell both OS to eliminate the possibility of comparing the price of identical units with the two OS. The fouled the XML ISO process with pressure-tactics instead of technical arguments. They short-tracked a 6000-page specification. I used to work on a 90-page specification and we did not bother to short-track. What is the point of forcing a broken spec on the world? The efforts to eliminate competition never cease but they constantly change form.

Some believe M$ now “loves” Free Software. It isn’t happening. Those salesmen at M$ will say anything to improve their market position and undermine the competition. That isn’t going to change.

A good article on the subject neglects a few obvious facts. The downward curve on many search terms at Google does not signify much because the number of search terms keeps growing as the web grows. New people are joining the web all the time through aging and affordability. The number of websites keeps growing. Naturally searches that target particular websites decrease in proportion. This indicates maturity of the subject searches not a decline in interest level. Further, although Ubuntu is the top curve, there are many distros whose total effect is similar. So, Ubuntu is the most popular but the popularity of GNU/Linux is much larger than the popularity of Ubuntu. Ubuntu naturally is at the top because it is the only GNU/Linux distro properly advertized. Ubuntu/Canonical does not wait for hits. They have deals with Dell and others to distribute the OS. They have free CDs. They have a thriving community which also pushes the distro. Other distros have fans but Ubuntu has salesmen and they target business and consumers. Suse and RedHat mostly target businesses. Choose your distro and run with it. If you need more help, there is a website for that. If you still have questions, try LinuxQuestions.org.

The Zegeniestudios.net site recommends Mint, a couple of Ubuntus and Debian for me, so I am OK…

How does a monopoly sustain itself? It can produce better products than anyone else or it can cheat, messing with competition and providing “inducements” to stick with the game-plan.

Obviously, without producing better products, M$ would not be able to maintain exclusivity on retailers’ shelves and OEMs product-lists unless they provided inducements. As we recently saw in SEC v Dell, it is not OK to keep those inducements secret if they are a substantial/material fact that could affect investors’ decisions. We know retailers and OEMs margins are tight so the inducements are material. M$ certainly has not produced better products than any other software house on the planet.

What has recently changed is that the SEC is paying huge rewards for whistle-blowers. How many thousands of people in the food-chain are in the know about how M$ keeps the monopoly going? How many have been laid-off or have become disenchanted with the magic kingdom? This is fair turnabout. M$ sends the BSA after its customers. It is fair that “partners” should spill the beans.

I look forward to the revelation that the emperor has no clothes in the coming year. While M$, itself may not have a technical violation all kinds of partners may have failed to disclose sufficiently to describe the risks to investors of dependency on M$.

The state of Free Software is good and getting better every day. I like to describe status in numbers but others are more qualitative. Take Eben Moglen, for instance. He gave an inspiring presentation on this topic at LibrePlanet 2010. You can download the video here (60 MB, ogv, 48 min.). Some key points I found surprising although I knew the facts. I had not connected the dots:

• Free Software has come from being ignored and ridiculed to being required by everyone. The world of IT now depends on Free Software.
• Free Software quickly solved the problem of “write once – run everywhere” when no one else could.
• Free Software is being defended against software-patents by large businesses that have tons of software-patents. Patent-trolls hurt all software businesses.
• Free Software is the best software because it has no commercial interests yet businesses love it because it is so good and costs so little.
• Free Software database, MySQL, was a key component of the purchase of SUN so that Oracle could defeat the scalability of M$’s SQLserver.
• Free Software will be even stronger in the future because the low cost of entry and the four freedoms (run, examine, modify and distribute) mean almost every youngster interested in IT will know about it and take that knowledge into adulthood.

Profit is the number one motive for malware these days with espionage close behind. Intel is in the process of buying McAfee for $7.68 billion. You can image what the whole anti-malware industry is worth if McAfee alone is worth that much. Intel is looking at tie-ins to hardware for this industry. Can you spell DRM? Expect locked-down motherboards and filters on top of Ethernet and USB ports and storage devices.

While security is a great thing, the anti-malware industry would be worth a lot less if it were not for the ubiquity of that other OS and its on-going welcome to malware. Users of that other OS are tired of their machines constantly being invaded by malware and slowing down as they become less secure. By building security into the hardware, I expect Intel intends to shield the end-user from most of this and thus supporting the monopoly. Imagine the marketing hype for that other OS not needing anti-malware stuff “only on Intel”. Expect more profit and higher prices…