Sheesh! When Will Folks Acknowledge GNU/Linux Has Arrived? at Robert Pogson

SJVN has replied to more FUD on the web about GNU/Linux never being a major desktop OS.

SJVN:“So why am I not ready to give up on desktop Linux since neither Vista’s failure nor Linux on netbook’s success brought Linux to millions of new desktops? Because, I don’t see a failure. I see a sea-change in desktop computing. Strohmeyer sees it too, but again we look at its importance in different ways.”

Wake up people! GNU/Linux has arrived:

many millions of desktop users around the globe, particularly EU, BR, RU, IN, and CN
OEMs shipping GNU/Linux widely
you can buy PCs with GNU/Linux new or used
M$ is spreading FUD about GNU/Linux again

Even in the USA, the most rabid fancountry for M$ has many mirrors for GNU/Linux distros. Last time I checked, those mirrors are mostly serving needs in the USA.

2009 was the year of the GNU/Linux desktop. These folks cannot revise history. M$ cut prices amounting to a $billion because the netbooks were on fire with GNU/Linux. M$ has not enough $billions to pay the world not to run GNU/Linux. It is happening. No one says MacOS is not a major desktop OS and GNU/Linux is on more PCs than MacOS.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

6 Responses to “Sheesh! When Will Folks Acknowledge GNU/Linux Has Arrived?”

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1 Bender Oct 19th, 2010 at 12:17 pm

I am not surprised that there is more GNU/Linux systems out there than Apple, Apple has chosen their niche which is rich countries and charging premium for their hardware. GNU/Linux is the biggest threat for M$ (which hasn’t really got a niche) that’s why it fights with it by all means. GNU/Linux is no threat to Apple (except Android on smart thingies).
2 sjvn Oct 20th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Read the fine article, then react.
3 Kurt Oct 20th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

I mean, look at the Smartphones, there we have Android, IPhones, Blackberry and –oh – shodder — Windows7, Windows Mobile 7, how was it called?

What certainly stifled Linux Desktop adoption was the immaturity of the KDE4 desktop but I can’t find these issues with KDE 4.5.2 anymore. Certainly the Novell buyout of SUSE was destructive.
4 Robert Pogson Oct 20th, 2010 at 2:57 pm

@SJVN

I did read the article. I was not criticizing your take. I will modify the post to be more explicit.
5 David "Lefty" Schlesinger Oct 21st, 2010 at 12:05 am

Except that there’s no support that I’ve seen for claiming that “GNU/Linux” has a higher usage share than OS X. Wikipedia reports a usage share (as of August 2010) for “mainstream Linux” (i.e. excluding Android) of just over one percent, versus a median usage share of over six percent for OS X. According to the statistics there, iOS (which is limited strictly to mobile devices from a single manufacturer) has a higher usage share than “mainstream Linux”…
6 Robert Pogson Oct 21st, 2010 at 5:08 am

IDC found GNU/Linux was ahead of MacOS years ago and it has picked up speed ever since. Since then Dell has begun distribution, Ubuntu happened, and Russia and Brazil made moves to adopt GNU/Linux in education. Brazil uses it in government more generally. Then there was Munich and Extremadura…

en.Wikipedia.org is heavily weighted to the USA. In Europe, many people speak English but I doubt it is their main language for browsing. India has English as a second language in large parts of the country but they are a small source for Wikipedia. China? Brazil?

The USA is quite a different market. Look at PC sales. Apple is in the top three in USA but in “others” in the rest of the world. There is a reason for that. The world wants small cheap computers. In the USA people want big things for some reason and it’s not performance. It’s the illusion of performance. The interior of a big ATX case is mostly air but folks will pay big bucks for air because they are fooled by the salesmen who get the retail shelves stocked only by Wintel. The rest of the world does stock GNU/Linux and that’s where the growth is, several times over, in the emerging markets of the world. The world does not need or want to copy the mistakes of the USA.