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back to article Year of the Penguin - el Reg's 2011 Linux-land roundup

It's been a tumultuous year for the Linux desktop. Anno domini 2011 saw the release of not one, but two major new desktops, the GNOME project's GNOME 3 shell and Ubuntu's rival Unity desktop. By the time most distros hit their stride in 2011, the GNOME 2.x line had been replaced with GNOME 3. With change comes angst - …

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  1. Richard Lloyd
    FAIL

    GNOME 3 will eventually get it right, but providing no easy transition to it was a mistake

    I'm sure that, after several iterations, GNOME 3 will eventually get it right. However, for both Ubuntu and Fedora to dive straight into it after many years with a mature GNOME 2 was a clear mistake. It was such a jarring change that the distros should have provided a decent fallback for a couple of releases (i.e. the old GNOME 2, not some half-baked "GNOME 3 made to look a bit like GNOME 2" effort that they dished out).

    During the transition period, they could then develop a *proper* GNOME 2-lookalike to sit on top of GNOME 3 (like the Linux Mint effort), which could be been provided for a couple of more releases at least (during which time, some of the "missing" GNOME 2 stuff could re-appear in core GNOME 3 hopefully).

    I don't have time to wait for all of that, so I'm trying out XFCE in Fedora 16 and have got it pretty close to my preferred GNOME 2 setup that I used in Fedora 14 (the last Fedora with GNOME 2). I'll keep trying out new Fedora and Ubuntu releases in the hope that GNOME 3 becomes usable, but to me, the current GNOME 3 looks like it's designed exclusively for a touchscreen (huge icons, lots of scrolling) which makes it an epic fail for desktops at the moment.

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    1. admiraljkb
      Reply Icon

      @Richard Lloyd

      " I don't have time to wait for all of that, so I'm trying out XFCE in Fedora 16 ... I'll keep trying out new Fedora and Ubuntu releases in the hope that GNOME 3 becomes usable, "

      Yep, I can sympathize. You've just described what I did with KDE for years while waiting for it to restabilize after the major, major disruption with version 4.

      If I might make a recommendation for another experiment - LXDE has been growing on me from trying Lubuntu out on some lower end hardware where it ran OK (PIII600, 256MB RAM, ouch). I then tried it out on modern hardware and WHOA - FAST! It has few of the cool gee whiz effects that slow stuff down, although after having had a bunch of that for a while, somehow going back to a simple, "it just works" (and nothing extra) UI is refreshing. I might start switching to LXDE as my normal desktop UI. I've already switched to it for desktop VM's as it is very gentle for memory/proc requirements.

      True story, I disabled ALL the eyecandy years ago on an aging WinXP work laptop at the end of its lifecycle to regain performance and drop some memory in the process. I was desperate with an overheating video card, running into the 3GB limit, and was still stuck with that laptop for 6 more months. It ended up looking quite plain and spartan, but it was more stable and faster as a result. I got more compliments on it, and even one person asking if I was beta testing a new version of Windows and where could she get it? It very much surprised me, since I'd basically made it look like Win95... Dull/drab and functional for me, but clean and fast apparently beat gee whiz. (For disclosure's sake, this was with a bunch of hw/sw engineers, so that might not hold true in a "normal office")

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  2. Bob 18
    Alien

    Copy Who?

    For years, Linux desktops did everything they could to copy Microsoft. Under the misguided belief that users could only be attracted if Linux looked like Windows, KDE and Gnome both did everything they could to look and feel like a warmed-over version of Windows 95. Real innovation was sorely lacking, and most users saw nothing in these desktops to get them to switch from Windows.

    Now they are copying Apple instead. But this may not be such a change: Microsoft itself has copied Apple in its recent revamp of the Taskbar. So we could say that KDE and Gnome continue to follow the lead of Microsoft.

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    1. E 2
      Reply Icon

      Holding head in hands.

      KDE & Gnome copied M$ and Apple. Linux copied UNIX and worked on POSIX compliance.

      (((KDE != Linux ) && (Gnome != Linux)) == TRUE)

      I used to run X on a Macbook Pro, and ran KDE3.5 on top of that. What then is KDE? Is KDE Mac OS X?

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      1. The BigYin
        Reply Icon

        @E 2

        Linux != An Operating System

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    2. eulampios
      Reply Icon

      And what exactly did Linux or *BSD copy from Microsoft? Like ... Bash (c-shell) was copied from PowerShell, and/or the default Mac OS X shell bash was shamelessly stolen by most GNU Linux distributives? Is it in the same category?

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      1. E 2
        Reply Icon

        History

        IIRC Bourne shell predates Powershell and Mac OS X. I'm pretty sure I recall correctly.

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  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    I counted my active applications last night...

    On four desktops on a single Mint 10 laptop, I had almost thirty applications - including windows 2000 running in a VM with a Z80 emulator itself running CP/M and sundry 8-bit development tasks... some of us do *work* on our tools; they're not just advertainment channels.

    Sure, I *can* do the same thing with Unity or Gnome 3 - but what I *can't* do is keep track of what's going on with anything like the same ease and ability. And that's because the new interfaces are less than ideal for anything other than full-screen applications on smallish screens.

    And until I can, they will remain interfaces for touchpads, not for usable tools.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      CP/M

      You're still developing for CP/M? For whom? The government of Latvia or Burma?

      I haven't seen a running CP/M machine for at least 5 years.

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      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Still developing for CP/M

        Only in as far as I need to test Z80 code before it goes into an embedded application - though there are a dozen working CP/M machines in the same room as me at work.

        There are some things which, once they're working and long term tested, you don't (or can't) change.

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      2. jake Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        @theodore

        My greenhouse runs on CP/M. Has for 26 or 27 years. It works, so why change it? I maintain similar systems for a few commercial flower, fruit & veg growers here in the Sonoma/Napa/Mendocino/Lake county area. I no longer charge for the service, it's more a hobby. On the other hand, I haven't had to pay for fruit & veg & cut flowers for over 20 years ...

        The fully tested backup system runs a stripped-down version of Slackware, but I fully intend to keep the Z80/S-100 systems running as long as possible. Yes, I have plenty of spare parts ... but I rarely need to use them. The old stuff was built like a shit-brickhouse :-)

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      3. LaeMing
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        @"I haven't seen a running CP/M machine for at least 5 years."

        You probably have, you just didn't know that was what you were looking at (or more likely looking strait past) because it didn't have a green screen attached. Zilog still makes a good living selling into the control-systems field.

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  4. BrentRBrian
    Linux

    History Check

    I believe it was Apple that borrowed from KDE.

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    1. admiraljkb
      Reply Icon

      re History Check

      "I believe it was Apple that borrowed from KDE."

      and they swiped from OS/2 Warp for the bottom dock. OS/2 did have some interesting experimentation going on. Microsoft has also borrowed from KDE on eyecandy for Vista/Win7. Apple's webbrowser is based on KDE's KHTML engine as well. One thing about this industry, is that people borrow all the time. Nothing new.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Who the fuck actually cares about this?

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    2. Sean Baggaley 1
      Reply Icon

      Er, no. Not even close.

      OS X was built on NeXTSTEP. This is why Jobs returned to Apple in 1995: Apple urgently needed a replacement for their old OS and NeXTSTEP was the best fit, so they bought the entire company, including Jobs.

      Take a look at some videos of what NeXTSTEP used to look like. You'll be surprised at just how many of the features in OS X today were already there 20 years ago. It really was a long, long way ahead of its time.

      NeXTSTEP v1.0 appeared in 1988, which predates KDE by some 8 years. KDE copied from NeXTSTEP (and, later, OS X), not the other way around.

      And, yes, that dock was also in NeXTSTEP first. All Apple did was move it to the bottom of the screen by default, although it can be trivially reset to the right or left if desired.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        And the Amiga

        appeared in ~1985 - I had one of the first A1000 and the extra disk drive and and a C compiler cost a fortune.

        Everyone copied from everyone else. But I've yet to see anything like the Amiga's split screens with multiple screens at different resolutions on screen simultaneously

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  5. Ilgaz

    Tired of repeating

    You can use both Mac and Windows exactly like 1984 and 1995 respectively. Additions are extra, paradigm doesn't change and windows 8 won't even require 3d accelerator.

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    1. ricegf
      Reply Icon

      Sorry, No

      One of the most common complaints that I receive as a senior computer architect is that the user interface on Windows changes with every release. Windows 95 didn't have a Start button - and the XP Start button is very different from AeroPeek. Win7's task bar works very differently from XP's task bar + quick launch bar. The control panel for each Windows release is different enough that we have to invest in training for each release. And on and on.

      Similarly, while I was a MacOS 2 power user, when I tried to evaluate the OS/X platform in 2011 I was *lost*. It was much better once I learned it, of course, but "exactly like 1984"? Not even close!

      The extent of similarity between the various Windows and Mac releases and different Gnome and KDE releases are roughly equivalent. The only significant difference is that Linux users have a choice, while Windows and Mac users are stuck with Microsoft's and Apple's view of how a GUI should work.

      I prefer choice, by the way...

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        "Windows 95 didn't have a Start button..."

        Swing and a miss. Windows 95 *did* have a 'Start' button; it was the first version of Windows where one clicked 'Start' to shut the machine down. In fact the word 'Start' and the ubiquitous button featured prominently in their marketing (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGNGRU5g1aU&feature=related) Windows 1.0 through 3.1 *didn't* have a 'Start' button...

        "The only significant difference is that Linux users have a choice" a trite fallacy. What does the choice give them? Not a lot really. It certainly doesn't make the UX any better or worse and it's not trivial to edit the configs or switch between the two, which IMHO renders that particular point moot.

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        1. LaeMing
          Reply Icon
          Happy

          Clicking 'start' to turn off made perfect sense

          if you thought of it as 'Start the shut-down procedure' (which IIRC, was a rather involved and lengthy task compared to shutting down DOS, though not a involved and lengthy as it got in later versions).

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          1. Piro Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Argh, tell me about it

            Clicking shut down on my home machine is lengthy, because it wakes up all the hard drives that were already parked and asleep, only to then park them and sleep them again.

            Thanks, Windows!

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        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          @ AnotherNetNarcissist

          But it's on the wrong end of the taskbar. As usual Microsoft stole someone else's ideas & botched the implemenation (mind, they perhaps didn't want a repeat of the Apple law suit).

          Quick list of new stuff in W95 that was in a desktop environment in 1987 (that should give knowledgeable people a clue), a taskbar all along the bottom edge which hides under application windows, a backdrop that it's possible to pin documents, & applications and/or links to them, context sensitive menus (there's a lot more).

          Stuff missed - altering scroll direction without having to move the mouse, not giving focus to windows just because you wanted scroll the contents of a window that wasn't the currently active one, true drag & drop between applications.

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      2. Ilgaz
        Reply Icon

        Really?

        There are people using windows 7 with classic theme which is assured to there on windows 8. There are graphics designers and various large screen professionals who never used the screen corners or even disabled them.

        I plan to use gentoo with window maker myself so you aren't really talking to some windows or Mac guy or an old fashion person. I am saying the company who introduced gui to mass market doesn't change the paradigm and its follower still have option to keep it. What are the credentials of gnome ui designers?

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      3. Red Bren
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Start me up

        Microsoft used the Rolling Stones track, "Start Me Up" in their marketing of Windows 95 to highlight the new Start button. The reliability issues were also highlighted by the lyric, "You make a grown man cry."

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  6. admiraljkb

    @Ilgaz

    Actually if you could use Windows v2, then you can use Win7 easily enough. It amazes me that the initial desktop UI's derived off Xerox Star basically still work OK.

    Win8 clearly breaks that clean succession though. Win8 is where the paradigm shifts more severely as it copied a combination of Unity/Android/iOS/winphone phone/tablet UI's, and then kept tweaking until it barely works.

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    1. Ilgaz
      Reply Icon

      Yes but

      Windows 8 is assured to have classic ux and even classic theme. Gnome guys change the entire thing and force users.

      And people (including me) theorize conspiracies about desktop Linux failure especially on large installs. Perhaps there is no conspiracy, just imagine what would cost to retrain all users if you had 40000 gnome desktops. Perhaps there is a conspiracy since the Trojan Mono app in Debian comes with gnome ;)

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Easy Fix: Xubuntu or Ubuntu 8 LTS

    Those options will save you from the latest brainfarts of the GNOME people. In about three years GNOME 3 will probably be robust and useable.

    Nobody forces you to use any particular Linux version and newer is definitely not better. It's not like the proprietary world, where you simply cannot buy WinXP anymore, despite you <b>wanting</b> to do exactly that.

    Also, Linux gained even more dominance in the server domain, where the GUI does not matter at all. That's the important 2011 message.

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  8. Michael Habel
    Pirate

    Linux on the Desktop = FAIL

    Always has been, and will undoubtedly will remain so. I see no reason why, or even how this will change. (For the Desktop)...

    But, lets look at integrated Devices, i.e. Set-Top Boxes (Cable & Satellite), Phones and Tablets as well as Data Storage Systems. Linux has always thrived well here. And none of these Applications would require a "Desktop" of sorts.

    I have used various Linux Distros, Redhat, SuSe, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian and Ubuntu to name a few.

    The thing I always hated about Linux is that Once you spend enough time figuring out how to do things on on CLI you'd have to then relearn those incarnations for another System.

    As a huge Fanboi of Klaus Schmidinger's VDR Project (http://linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Main_Page), One of the major highlights of my life is when I need to either update to a newer (or change over to a different) Distro, and find that I then need to reconfigure that Distros' version of LIRC to work with my Remote. Or in the case that most of the newer Distros are finally moving to Ubuntu as a base. Find that LIRC has been superseded by something even more assinine, and compleatly fails to do it's job. Even as the Distro makes chime in as to how this would make Most Remotes work OoTB. Imagine my surprise when ~90% of the Buttons actually Worked, save the Blue, Menu, Exit and Info Buttons then DO NOT WORK!

    But, then I'm still loathing the withdraw of the 60W Incandescent Light Bulbs as well

    plus ça change I guess....

    But Linux on the Desktop? Naghh it's never gonna happen, and unlike my Desktop loving friends here, I can't wait to see the back of 'em. What I wouldn't give to find a decent MoBo that actually still had a full complement (i.e. FIVE) 32-Bit PCI Slots on it. Good Luck tracking One of those down. Gaming belongs on the Consoles, and productivity can be done on a Notebok / Netbook or even Tablets or Phones. (although I'd like to see these Two pick up where Crapple left the Newton for this endevor though). The Desktop may very well still have a lot of life left in it, for those chores that Mobile Devices either can not or will not handle. But these are on the whole very limited in scope and those who'd cry the most about 'em will not still this tide.

    The Desktop as we know it is dieing out, I wouldn't even it give it Ten Years time. before it falls off the map, and Windows 8 with it's touchy - Feelly Interface is a good a harbinger of this as any.

    Pirate Flag Cause One of the great things about it (VDR), is You don't need a Skybox to record things, and as Linux is otherwise unrestricted you can actually record what you want when you want, and not what Sky (or others I'm thinking of HD+ here), would tell you, you could.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Flameboy

      Yawn

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  9. JDX Gold badge

    re:The desktop barely matters...

    That supposes everything is going to end up moving to a web-server based paradigm. While at the moment it's going that way, we have to be aware that this is very fashionable so while in many cases it's a great idea, many people are _only_ doing this because it's cool... porting desktop apps that work great, to web-versions which are not as rich and require constant web connectivity.

    I wonder if things will end up balanced a bit further towards the desktop in a few years... instead of everything being forced onto the browser simply because the browser is now capable of doing so.

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  10. Mikel
    Gimp

    Android?

    2011 saw the Linux kernel put into the hands of more new people than any year ever - in the form of Android. November found the sum at over 200,000,000 Android users, and December saw the number swelling by 700,000 per day. With over half the market in the US, and soon the world, Android looks to be the delivery mechanism to finally bring Linux to the masses.

    Does this not deserve at least a mention in your year-end Linux wrapup?

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    1. Eeep !
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Because they aren't choosinh Linux

      Probably not worth mentioning because they didn't choose the underlying OS, they chose the functionality (or lots of stuff they don't actually use) provided - and little (if any) of that functionality is unique to Android, iOS and WinPhone provide similar, and I'd guess that Symbian could provide similar. Perhaps they chose based on GUI that matched the devices their friends had shown them, but don't think that OS itself is the decider for most people. It's like saying that people chose ARM based phones rather than Intel/Motorola/Zilog because of the processor architecture rather than what the processor architecture supports. Especially considering most applications on iOS and Android (guess some kind of WinPhone CLR) run in some kind of VM the underlying OS is probably even less important.

      Why do I think that most phone users don't choose base on OS, because I like Android, have an Android phone and recommend it when asked, but won't consider an Android tablet that does not allow use of the Android Market Place out of the box - so no cheap Anova device because they use AppsLib, even though they are good hardware.

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      1. JohnG
        Reply Icon

        "Probably not worth mentioning because they didn't choose the underlying OS..."

        That's just silly - it's like saying iphones are irrelevant because most users didn't explicitly choose ios. The point he was making is that Android is introducing linux to a very large number of users, most of whom would probably never use Ubuntu or similar.

        About adding Google Market to a tablet - there's an app for that - and you only have to run it once.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          @JohnG - No, Android is not introducing Linux to anyone!

          Linux was and still is all about end-user freedom, unlike Android, it is FOSS. I know, I know, Android is using a fork of Linux kernel but it is hopelessly shackled deep into the bowels of a proprietary locked hardware platform. In order to do something in Android you absolutely need :

          1- someone to write an app for that

          2- someone to allow you to use that app (app store or Something)

          I was pretty close of buying a Samsung Galaxy tablet running Android v3 and I was baffled to discover at the last minute that :

          1. there is no Skype for Android on tablets although there is one for Android phones. More generally, except Google Talk (unavailable in large areas of the world) there is no other video+voice communication solution

          2. Samsung will not offer the upgrade to Android 4, and I'll have to buy another tablet with the new version even though no hardware upgrades would be required.

          Hopefully, I'm old enough to be able in the near future to stick with my desktop running on the (still) open PC hardware. I know for sure very few of you can understand and appreciate the ability to own and trust your computer as well as the rewarding feeling that your computer trusts you too.

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          1. Vic
            Reply Icon

            > Android is using a fork of Linux kernel

            No. Android is using a Linux kernel, but it doesn't use the Gnu userspace that many people seem to want to call "Linux". That's sort of what RMS's (oft-misunderstood) rant was all about...

            > 1- someone to write an app for that

            You need someone to write an app for anything you want to do with any computer. But writing for Android really isn't very hard.

            > 2- someone to allow you to use that app (app store or Something)

            Absolutely wrong in every possible respect.

            Android is *not* a walled garden. You can put what you want on it. Side-loading of APKs is commonplace on the cheaper tablets which don't have a marketplace, and supported on every single one of them.

            > no Skype for Android on tablets although there is one for Android phones

            And what is the *difference* between a tablet and a phone?

            > Samsung will not offer the upgrade to Android 4

            That's between you and Samsung. It has nothing to do with Android.

            But if the Samsung hardware can support Android 4, you can bet someone will release code that enables your hardware to run it. It's up to you whether or not to take that route.

            Vic.

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      2. LaeMing
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        @Eeep !

        Who on earth chooses their own desktop OS based on anything /other/ than its functionality?

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        1. Vic
          Reply Icon

          > Who on earth chooses their own desktop OS based on anything /other/ than its functionality?

          I do.

          Freedom is important to me. It's a significant factor in choosing software of any sort.

          The fact that my choice of desktop OS is both Free and functional is rather wonderful, actually...

          Vic.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eh?

    GNU/Linux on the desktop has failed - adding all the hundreds of distros together barely gives a market share of 1%. Are we expected to believe that suddenly GNU/Linux will be on phones, tablets etc? Not going to happen.

    The GNU/Linux crowed had a massive chance (probably their final one) when MS dropped the ball with Vista. But the utlra-nerds were too busy kicking sand in each others' faces and forking to do anything cohesive. The very few OEMs they did (somehow) manage to con into releasing hardware with GNU/Linux saw a massive flop as there was no clear vision.

    Loathe or love MS and Apple, at least one knows what one is getting and they have a clear direction, hardware support and standardisation of idioms. This does not exist in GNU/Linux - they can't even decide what a right-click should do, the behaviour differs from program to program in the same desktop environment; pathetic. This is what you get when their is no clear design and no quality assurance (the users are the testers).

    GNU/Linux will be around for a while longer in nice areas (like set-top boxes) but over time it will disappear from there as well. Their ecosystem is too chaotic, too fractured, too adversarial, to cliquey for any manufacturer of any decent size to consider using it.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Evidence?

      GNU/Linux on the desktop has failed - adding all the hundreds of distros together barely gives a market share of 1%.

      'Market share' can be calculated (and exaggerated) by the developers of items sold.

      Should market share also be calculated on number of downloads, magazine cover disks (do they still do them?), CD/DVD/Usb sticks handed to mates?

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      1. LaeMing
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        "magazine cover disks"

        Heh, that is how I discovered Linux existed, back in the late 90's (RH5.2).

        I was just coming off Apple's canning the Newton platform, so was in the mood for someting not under the thumb of a big faceless corporation.

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  12. Paradroid
    Thumb Down

    Mobile focus?

    So Canonical got nowhere near perfecting the desktop experience, but they think the right thing to do is switch priorities to mobile. Talk about trying to run before you can walk.

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  13. Sander van der Wal

    A Linux UI for the masses is never going to work

    And the reason is very simple: a Linux UI is created by developers for developers and some closely related professions like sysadmins.

    And the reason that nobody else wants to use a Linux UI is because these systems insist that you enjoy doing the computer equivalent of tying bootlaces and replacing nappies. Children grow up, but these computers are still acting as if they are 2 year olds.

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    1. Chemist
      Reply Icon

      "ecause these systems insist that you enjoy doing the computer"

      Absolute nonsense !

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    re: so i asked

    I asked my 21 year old niece what phone I should get.

    "Well, it depends if you're a Windows person or an Apple person".

    "What about Linux".

    "??"

    "If you are an Apple person there is the iPhone, and Android that's like Windows".

    "But Android is Linux!"

    "??"

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    1. gerryg
      Reply Icon

      @The_Noble_Rot

      I'm not sure why that is a reply.

      Actually, the person who sought my advice didn't know that Android was Linux based either. For unidentified reasons, a librarian with a need to think about universal access had become aware that the computing world was becoming more diverse and she had to do something.

      Unless one is using some forms, opening a pdf on any platform, "just works". Whether the typical end user notices it is oKular or Adobe (etc) is not relevant. Similarly internet banking "just works" and you can now use British Airways' website (for example) whereas before ActiveX (or something) was a requirement.

      None of that will be of the slightest interest to the typical end-user. Why should it?

      As I understand it Linux netbooks were popular because of their price advantage but failed because on balance they didn't "just work" for a lot of the things end-users wanted to do.

      One of the LOTD areas that most definitely doesn't "just work" is online public services. It's not that amazing on Apple either. A particular joy is the public sector unthinking adoption of file formats that still only work well on one platform (if at all on others), e.g., the drift to using .docx without any obvious decision to do so.

      Over time the growth of Android will produce a critical mass of don't care end-users that do care that some stuff they want to do, doesn't "just work". This will create pressure for change.

      Possibly your niece is about to start a PhD in an aspect of kernel design, but I could easily find 100 people that don't know that there's a difference between hardware and software. Or how a light switch works. Or that there isn't such a thing as a tin of striped paint.

      I didn't understand your point.

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  16. AndrueC Silver badge
    Mushroom

    A storm in a teacup. And a small teacup at that. According to some sources the Linux share of the desktop market is less than 'other'.

    <flame>Should El Reg be devoting column inches to such minority OSes?</flame>

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      @AndrueC - The LiMux project has already migrated 9000 PCs

      to that minority OS and they are all uncounted by the market share, according to your sources.

      So I guess El Reg is doing a fine job talking about Linux.

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    2. Chemist
      Reply Icon

      "the Linux share of the desktop market... less than other"

      This might be true but EVERY one of those users have chosen to move to Linux.

      In a world where essentially all desktop computers are sold with Windows or Apple OS pre-installed and where most people, in any case, don't care I'd count the desktop usage of Linux as a major success.

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